The Heart So Hollow
by savvyliterate
Summary: For the first time in six years he desired someone. He wanted a single mom in his hometown who was hell bent on poisoning herself with junk food. A witchy woman with dark curls and blue eyes who made him smile. He was in so much trouble. (pre-series LL AU)
1. Prologue

**Author's note:** This pre-series AU came about thanks to "Lorelai's Independence Day" by junienmomo, written for Meags09's Lorelai birthday ficathon. I blame both of them for this. In other words, if you want to read about a Stars Hollow grad turned baseball star and a plucky inn manager, you have come to the right fic.

* * *

 _April 1988_

Lorelai found the baseball card on the sidewalk while juggling Rory, a stroller, groceries and a thousand other items that would be far easier with a car. The closest thing she had to her own car was an abandoned Hot Wheels toy that a guest at the Independence Inn left behind and had made its way into her 3-year-old daughter's possession.

She wasn't sure what drove her to pick the card up. Clearly it had just been dropped, because it looked brand new. The edges were straight, and the face of the card was shiny. The man pictured on it was young, just a few years older than herself. He gazed at the camera solemnly, and she absently wondered what it would take to tease a smile out of him. Now there was a ridiculous thought, considering this was a baseball card and and she had no clue who Butch Danes was.

Lorelai found herself looking at the hardware store, wondering if it belonged to someone in there. It made sense since it was practically at the bottom of the little stairs that led up to the glass-fronted door. So she pushed the it open and managed to get toddler, stroller, and all her bags into the comfortably crowded space.

She was quite sure this was the first time she'd ever been inside a hardware store, and the smell fresh-cut wood and metal were a lot different from the chemical cleaners and vanilla-scented candles that made up the bulk of her life for the past couple of years. Rory's nose wrinkled, and Lorelai figured it was safe to say that the hardware store wouldn't be a place the Gilmore girls would be hanging out in anytime soon.

The man behind the counter was thin and pale, but with laser bright blue eyes that reminded Lorelai of someone she'd seen before. He had a box on the counter that was filled with cards, and she could see the face on them as she got closer. It was a match. She looked down at the card she held, at the blue eyes of the man on the card, then back at the older man. "Is this you?" she blurted, flashing it at him.

"Oh, musta dropped that one," he said, then broke into a wide smile. "No, not me. That's my son, Luke. They like using that nickname of his they slapped on him in high school. He got called up from Pawtucket last year, and he's been with the Sox since." He gestured to the box. "I ordered quite a few extra, you know, just to have. I'm pretty proud of my boy."

"Huh. I know absolutely nothing about baseball," Lorelai admitted.

The man opened his mouth to speak, then he started coughing.

"Is he hurt, Mama?" Rory asked from her stroller. She started wiggling around.

"Just a sec, Rory." Lorelai rushed around the counter and found a glass of water set just out of reach. She nudged it into the man's hand, and he took a sip. "Are you OK?"

He gave her a rueful grin. "Cancer does that to you."

Lorelai wasn't familiar with baseball, and she was less familiar with cancer. Even being on her own for two years, there was still a lot about life that had eluded her while in her upper class bubble in Hartford. She patted the man's shoulder and waited until his coughing fit had passed until she circled around the counter to rejoin Rory, who was trying to undo the straps on her stroller.

"Heya, kid, you know our agreement about you staying in the stroller." She threaded a hand through Rory's fine hair.

"But he's sick, Mama!" Rory protested.

"Your mama gave me some water, so I'm feeling much better," the man told Rory, his smile returning.

"Mama said hugs cure anything," Rory told the man as gravely as a toddler could.

"Well, your mama is right."

"Of course she is," Rory said with absolute certainty. "Would you like a hug?"

The man walked around the counter and crouched down to Rory's height. "I would love a hug." He gestured to Lorelai. "If that's OK with your mama."

The kindly hardware store owner with cancer didn't exactly scream "stranger danger" to Lorelai, so she undid the stroller straps while she puzzled over her daughter's behavior. Rory tended to be reticent around people she didn't know.

Rory launched out of the seat and into the man's arms, and he lifted her up. Rory squealed, dangling her legs. "Mama, I'm high!"

"Yeah, you are, punkin," Lorelai said a bit sadly. There weren't a lot of men in Rory's life, and part of her wished that it was Christopher showing fatherly pride in his daughter instead of a complete stranger.

The man stretched his free hand out to Lorelai. "Bill Danes."

She took it. Despite his frail appearance, his grip was still warm and strong. "Lorelai Gilmore. This is Rory."

"Ah, Mia's girls." His smile grew wider as he patted Rory's back. "We don't see you two in the town enough."

"You know of us?"

"Paper had that article on you a couple years back."

"With my name spelled wrong," Lorelai muttered. It still amazed her that she lived in a place small enough that the appearance of a teenage girl with her baby daughter would make the front page of the newspaper.

"Did it help?" Rory asked Bill.

"Yes, your hug helped immensely. I feel much better." Bill patted Rory's back one more time and handed her back over to Lorelai. "I miss my girl," he said a bit wistfully. "She left town with her son awhile back, and I don't hear much from them."

"Sorry to hear that," Lorelai said, propping Rory on her own hip and trying to ignore the slight stab of guilt his comment brought on.

She glanced down at her watch and flinched. She told Mia she would be back by 5, and it was after 4 now. It would take a good 20 minutes to walk back to the Independence Inn. "We've gotta get going. It's good to meet you, Bill." Lorelai put Rory back in her stroller, then realized she still held the baseball card. She held it out to him. "Oh, here."

Bill waved her off. "No, keep it." His eyes twinkled. "Maybe it'll bring you luck."


	2. Chapter 1

_June 1999_

Early afternoons were usually Lorelai's favorite time at the inn. When she had been a maid, it had been the most hectic time of day. But as management, she could sit on the back porch of the inn, drink a cup of coffee, and enjoy that golden period between checkout time and when the night's guests arrived. On the really nice days, the screen door to the kitchen was utilized, and she listened to the staff bustle about getting ready for dinner. Every few minutes, Sookie would come to the door with a new tidbit of gossip or a dish to try as Lorelai went over paperwork or simply took the chance to just _be_.

Sookie had been discussing the town meeting scheduled for the following week, but her chatter had blended in with the overall din that was the Independence Inn's kitchen at least five minutes earlier. Lorelai's problems were too numerous to even pay lip service at the moment. She sat at her favorite wrought-iron table just outside the kitchen, a thick packet of papers in her hands and completed forms in her lap. She tapped the packet to her forehead and wondered, not for the first time, if she could magically transform Monopoly money into cash.

Chilton. It was the next to step to fulfilling Rory's dream of going to an Ivy League school, of getting out of Stars Hollow and making a name for herself that had little connection to her rich grandparents in Hartford. It offered her child far more opportunities than Stars Hollow High ever would, and to her joy, Rory had gotten accepted to the school.

There was a huge _but_ attached. That _but_ in the form of the invoice with a large number and more zeroes after it than Lorelai cared to admit after it. The school offered ample financial assistance, and Lorelai _knew_ that she qualified.

Except for the fact that she was the daughter of Richard and Emily Gilmore.

The denial of the financial aid package didn't expressively say that, of course. It had very lofty, impersonal reasons like her salary being too high (bullshit), her credit score too low (not so much bullshit), and Rory's grades not quite being good enough (the big amount of bullshit there ever was to bullshit), and easy access to additional funding sources.

It didn't matter that Lorelai had barely spoken to her parents in more than a decade. According to Chilton, she was a Gilmore, ergo she should ask her parents for the money.

And now she had to go home and tell her 14-year-old daughter that she couldn't go to Chilton this fall. Maybe next year, when she was in 10th grade. It was still enough time for her to get into college preparatory classes, make herself look good on applications. Rory could also look at other prep schools. Not the Lorelai attended, of course. She was quite sure her yearbook picture hung in the office with a giant X across it. Maybe a few darts thrown at it for good measure.

"Lorelai? What do you think?"

She nearly upset the papers, turning her attention to Sookie, who stood in the door with a spoon in her hands. "Sorry?"

"About what Taylor wants to do with the old hardware store." Sookie sighed. "You weren't paying attention, were you?"

"Sure, I was paying attention. All ears." Lorelai flicked her lobes.

"Liar," Sookie said and handed over her spoon. "Taste."

Lorelai licked the gravy off and considered. "Less salt."

"I knew it! Pierre!" Sookie yelled at one of the sous chefs and banged back into the kitchen, causing a jar to fall off the closest countertop.

Putting Chilton aside for the moment, Lorelai gathered the papers and followed Sookie inside, stepping around the jar as another sous chef rescued it. "What about the hardware store?"

Sookie was back at the stove, alternatively stirring her sauce and reaming out the beleaguered Pierre. When he slinked off for a good sulk, Sookie turned her attention back to Lorelai. "Taylor wants to use eminent domain and have the town take ownership of the building. He wants to gut it and turn it into some sort of collectible plate store or ice cream parlor. He's going to bring it up at the next town meeting."

Ice cream was good. Taylor's methods … not so good. Lorelai went to the coffeemaker, turning it over in her head as she poured out a mug. Bill Danes had died nearly a couple years after she and Rory had met him on an early spring morning while running errands in Stars Hollow. Life and Rory had kept her from stopping by to see the man who had been so kind to her very often. They did manage to stop by at least once a month, where Bill proceeded to dote on Rory as he grew weaker and weaker. His death had actually been Rory's introduction to the concept, as Lorelai and Mia had to gently tell her why they could no longer visit Mr. Bill. A maid shortage prevented Lorelai from attending the funeral, but she had taken Rory to place flowers at the grave. Rory insisted on going once a month after that for years, and from time to time, they still stopped by the cemetery.

Michel summoned Lorelai to the front desk before she could answer Sookie, and she spent the rest of the day taking care of a group who wanted to re-enact famous Revolutionary War footsteps by creating actual footsteps out of plaster. Lorelai had to ban the use of the material in the rooms.

But the hardware store lingered in her mind as she headed home from work, ordering pizza as soon as she walked in the door. When Rory came home from Lane's, Lorelai evaded the Chilton issue by bringing up the town meeting.

"Wow," Rory said as they ate and chatted. "Taylor's been wanting that place for years."

"I'm surprised it took him this long," Lorelai admitted.

"Probably a statute of limitations in effect. Who owns the building, Mom?"

"Bill's son, I think," Lorelai mused. He had two kids, she remembered. There was the son, the guy on the baseball cards that Bill had been so proud of. There was also a daughter, who had a kid around Rory's age. She racked her brain, trying to remember if either had come in for the funeral. Yes, the son had come, but not the daughter. Mia had mentioned it.

"Oh, baseball card guy!" Rory said, sitting at the table with her pizza. She took two bites and sat back. "Eminent domain's really only supposed to be used for public use, though economic development would qualify. The hardware store's been empty for nearly 10 years, hasn't it?"

"Yeah." Lorelai munched thoughtfully on her pizza. "But it's not like the place is rundown. It's in good repair, and I know there's maintenance being done on it. Hotshot baseball stars don't come back to town very often."

"I don't think Bill would want Taylor just taking over the building," Rory said. "He's at least supposed to try to buy it from the current owner first."

"It is a crummy way to do it," Lorelai agreed.

"Is there anyway to contact him? Butch, right? I mean, does he even know? He deserves to know. I would want to know if it was me."

"Yeah." Lorelai danced her pizza crust over the plastic plate, tracing Betty Boop's hair. "I doubt he's in the phone book though, kid."

"It's Stars Hollow. He has to be in _someone's_ phone book."

* * *

Lorelai was in her office ordering supplies when Sookie burst in two days later, waving a Post-It note.

"Got it!" Sookie sang, and leaned over, sticking the note on the monitor. Scrawled out was a Boston-area phone number.

"Is this …?" Lorelai asked, peeling it off.

Sookie preened. "Yup!"

"How do you even have this?" Lorelai gaped.

"Rachel. Friend from high school, who was a couple years ahead of me. She and Butch dated for ages until she headed to the Congo. They're still good friends. She just happens to have his current number. I emailed her as soon as you called me the other night, told her what was going on, and she sent it to me. She said she'd warn him herself, but she's in Zimbabwe or something that has really bad phone reception and that he refuses to use email. But I said you could handle it, and that you wouldn't sell it or anything, and here we are!"

"Sook, you're the best!" Lorelai hugged her and safely put the Post-It note in her wallet. She tucked it back in her purse and stared at it. "I feel like I just put the entrance codes to Fort Knox in there."

"Let's just say there's a certain amount of the female population of this planet that would cheerfully murder you for that phone number."

"Is Butch Danes really that big a deal?"

"Lorelai," Sookie groaned. "You read magazines as much as I do."

"Yeah, but for stuff like UFO invasions, movie stars, things like that. Not baseball players."

"Please. I forget you didn't go to Stars Hollow High and had to deal with his fan club. Just look at the guy!" Sookie leaned over Lorelai's shoulder and brought up the website for the Boston Red Sox. She clicked through to the player roster and then scrolled down, clicked again.

Lorelai's heart gave a tiny jolt as she found herself looking into the same pair of blue eyes that was on the baseball card Bill had given her so long ago. Age, she thought, had treated him well. He looked a bit more careworn, and the serious expression in the current photo was pretty much identical to the one on the baseball card. Do you ever smile, she wondered.

The site also rattled off a bunch of facts: height, weight, and a bunch of stats that meant absolutely nothing to her. It also gave his real name, which she realized that she'd forgotten at some point in the years since Bill died.

"Now do you see?" Sookie asked.

"Yeah," Lorelai said faintly. "Now, I see."

* * *

 _Damn you, Sookie._

Lorelai scowled at the TV as she put on the baseball game. She wondered if the old set would have a fit, because she was quite sure no sports of any sort had ever been played on it. Well, movies were the exception. Even so, it would probably riot and explode as it joined the obsolete tech hole in the sky.

"Just think of it as a live version of _A League of Their Own_ ," Lorelai soothed as she patted the set. She sat on the couch with the remote, the portable phone, and the Post-It note.

It had been easy until Sookie pulled up the picture of Butch Danes. Luke, she reminded herself. His real name was Luke. Now she had a current face to go with the name, and unlike the baby face on the baseball card, the adult seriousness was enough that she worried about pissing the guy off. That was the last thing she wanted to do. Ergo, she was making sure to do this the coward's way.

The Red Sox were out in Chicago, which meant there was no way, no how he could be home. Unless he had a double, because the real Butch Danes was standing on a pitcher's mound on her TV screen, and damn that uniform fitted him well. She found herself mesmerized by the fluid movements. Pulling the arm back, swinging it around, releasing the ball. Glaring at the mound when it didn't land where he wanted it. At one point, he yanked off his cap to run his hand through his hair, and she grinned to see he had inherited his father's receding hairline.

There were other subtle things she picked up as well. He wasn't chewing anything, which told her that he didn't do snuff like supposedly a lot of players did. He looked tired, and she absently wondered how he had fared in the years since Bill died. Was there anyone around who took care of this guy?

And it was officially weird to be dwelling this much on a stranger, Stars Hollow's prodigal son or not. Lorelai stared at the portable phone in her hand, then at the TV screen. Right. OK. She was doing this. She was going to call and leave a message on his answering machine, and unless the guy had a girlfriend waiting for him, there was no way he was going to answer the phone.

She dialed the number and lifted her eyebrows at the brusque answering machine greeting. Mr. Sunshine, she absently thought as the tape clicked over and oh hello, it was recording. It took her a good five seconds for her brain to register that yes, she really needed to start talking. Now.

"Hi. Um …" She tripped over what to call him. Use his real name? Should she use his last? That nickname of his? She plowed ahead."Hi! My name is Lorelai Gilmore and don't delete this, please, please don't delete this. I'm not some salesman or kooky fan or crazy stalker, but now I do sound like a crazy stalker and just forget the last 10 seconds, OK? Right. I'm Lorelai Gilmore, and I live in Stars Hollow, where you once lived. No, I'm not trying to rope you into some charity function or-"

The machine clicked off with a shrill beep.

"Damn it!" Lorelai groaned and called back.

"Right, answering machines have a limit. I forgot about that. Anyhow, I knew your dad when he was alive. I used to take my kid in there to see him, and he loved her and anyhow, I figured you should know that Taylor Doose is trying to take ownership of the hardware store through eminent domain. Which my daughter says he does have somewhat of a leg to stand on, but hey she is also 14 years old. Smartest teen in Connecticut, but not exactly a lawyer, you know? Well, if you've ever been around teens, you know they turn you around in more circles than a lawyer ever would, and they shoulda had Rory as the-"

 _Click_. Lorelai hit the redial once more.

"Sorry, sorry, got off on a tangent. I'm not sure if you already know about this or even care, but I liked your dad, and he doesn't deserve to have his store turned into the latest collectible plate store. Ice cream parlor not so bad, but … anyhow, Taylor's planning to bring this up at the next town meeting on Tuesday, so in case you're interested, I wanted to let you know that. 7:30 at Miss Patty's dance studio. So, thank you for your time. Um … break a leg? No, no, score lots of touchdowns. Baskets? Goals? Home runs! That's it! Go team!"

Lorelai turned off the phone and dropped it next to her as she pushed her hands through her hair. "That was officially the second-craziest thing I've ever done," she addressed the Butch on TV, because the Red Sox were still on the field. Nothing really could top running away with her 1-year-old at the age of 17, though the weekend she, Rory, and Sookie tried to create the world's largest snow cone probably came close. Right, time for bed.

She turned off the TV. She dropped the phone back on the charger as she headed toward the stairs and frowned at her purse. She dug out her wallet and rooted through the inner pockets until she found the baseball card tucked behind her driver's license.

It was slightly worn around the edges, and it never occurred to her that if she sold it, she could easily pay for a year's tuition to Chilton. Even had she realized its value, she would never sell it. It had brought her too much luck over the years. She ran her finger over the photograph. Her lucky baseball card. God, she was so clueless about the sport. She was sure it was touchdowns, not home runs. Still. She gave the card a fond smile.

"You've got a lot of luck to scrounge up for us this time, Butch," Lorelai said. "Chilton. The hardware store. That's a lot of responsibility for a baseball card. You probably have to just pick one or the other since I'm sure there's only a certain amount of luck that goes around. I'll figure out Chilton. You work your magic on the hardware store. Good night, baseball guy."

She tucked the card back in her wallet and headed to bed.

* * *

Lorelai tried not to spend the next five days stalking her answering machine and failed miserably.

She took to carrying the phone with her all over the house, and not even Rory's relentless teasing persuaded her to give up her stranglehold on the device. Every time the phone rang, she immediately answered. Three salesmen, two Sookie calls, and one from her mother. The last one caused Lorelai to yelp in panic and immediately hang up on her. Then she unplugged the answering machine for 15 minutes to ensure her mother couldn't call back and leave a message. She literally did not have the mental energy to handle Emily Gilmore at the moment, nor did she feel like explaining to Rory why she was hanging up (again) on her grandmother.

"Any word?" Sookie asked as she, Lorelai, and Rory walked to Miss Patty's for the town hall meeting.

"No. I left a message on Thursday, but just in case, I left a second message on Sunday." Like the first, Lorelai had timed it for when she was pretty sure no one was home. "We've done all we can at this point, not unless I go to Boston and just show up at the stadium."

"And probably get thrown in jail for stalking in the process," Sookie replied.

"Bingo!"

They joined the line of people filing into the dance studio, and most of the available chairs were already taken. The only row to have three empty seats together was in the very back, and the girls noticed Kirk and his mother eying them eagerly. So they pounced, claiming their spots before the Gleasons could make their move.

Lorelai took the third seat in and had just settled herself when a deep voice spoke up from somewhere behind her. "This seat taken?"

"No, go ahead." Lorelai absently waved to the seat on her right, which in her mind was the worst one during a town hall meeting. Or the best depending on if you wanted to stay out of Taylor's direct line of sight. But it was so much fun to antagonize him.

"There's a lot of people here tonight," Rory observed, looking ahead of them. Usually they were able to get seats in the middle, or even right up in front. But it seemed more than half the town had turned out for this meeting and it was quickly becoming standing room-only. "Do you think they're all here about the hardware store?"

"Well, it certainly isn't excitement over lake cleanup day next week," Lorelai said.

"I'm not even excited for that," Rory sighed. "I hate it when Taylor organizes cleanup days. He makes sure the grass is all cut the same, and if it's wrong, he makes you go over it with garden shears until it's perfectly even."

The person to Lorelai's right snorted, and she flicked a glance in his direction. She nearly did a double-take.

The guy was dressed a long-sleeved button-down flannel shirt and jeans. In June. He wore a baseball cap like half the men in the room, but this one was turned backwards. And, the weirdest thing was that he wore a dark pair of sunglasses. Inside.

"Hi," Lorelai said cheerfully.

"Hi," the guy responded.

She pointed at the sunglasses. "Y'know it's OK to take those off."

"I'm good."

"Oh." Why would he be wearing sunglasses ins … oh. _Oh!_ Lorelai gave him a sympathetic smile. "If you want, I can narrate you what's going on, because Taylor can get this really neat shade of purple when he's-"

"I'm not blind," the guy snapped at her.

Lorelai huffed. "Then why are you wearing those?"

"Because I want to."

OK, Mr. Verbose. Lorelai rolled her eyes and settled back in her seat. Her fingers twitched as she waited for the meeting to start. Her stomach was twisting itself into knots, and she just wanted to know what was going to happen to the hardware store. She shouldn't care so much, but she did. She loved this town, and she had good memories of that thin, lonely guy who loved her daughter's hugs and the scant company they were able to provide. She didn't want Stars Hollow turned into Taylorville. And it just wasn't right the way Taylor was going about doing this. It was one thing if the property was in disrepair, but it wasn't. If Taylor did this to the hardware store, what stopped him from doing it to someone else's business? What did it teach Rory and the other town kids?

Why hadn't Butch Danes returned her calls?

Maybe, Lorelai thought sadly, he really didn't care about his dad's old store after all.

She dug into her purse and pulled out a package of Red Vines. She offered it first to Rory, then she turned to Mr. Verbose. Something about him just made her want to needle him. "Want one?"

He folded his arms over his chest. "Do you even know what's in those things?"

"Sugary goodness," Lorelai replied and peeled off one.

"The sugar alone will kill ya, that is if your insides aren't picked by the chemicals and preservatives in those things."

Mr. Verbose _and_ a ray of sunshine. Something about him reminded her of Butch Danes' voicemail message. "Suit yourself," she said and popped it in her mouth. She turned in her seat to chat with Rory and Sookie about seeing a movie that weekend.

Lorelai felt a shiver of awareness go down her back, and it took all of her self control not to whip her head around. She subtly looked out the corner of her eye at Mr. Verbose. No, he wasn't blind, because she had the impression that he was watching her very intensely as she ate her candy. Her hands shook as she peeled off another Red Vine, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to egg him on further or grab Rory and find other seats. She needed to go on a date, she decided. It had been a long time since she'd been on one. Not many guys were interested in a 31-year-old with a teenage daughter. Still, she needed to do something, because Mr. Verbose with the flannel and sunglasses was apparently staring at her like she was a five-course meal, and she wasn't repulsed. In fact, he had nice cheekbones. Her gaze dropped to his lap. And hands. Strong, calloused hands that could … _get a grip, Lorelai_. _No, no, not that sort of grip. Dirty!_

Harry chose that moment to call the meeting to order, and the banging of the gavel was one of the sweetest sounds she'd ever heard. The meeting meandered its way through the usual town business, including the dreaded cleanup day at the lake. Plans were nailed down for the 4th of July festival and fireworks. The school calendar for the upcoming year was announced, and Lorelai studiously avoided looking at Rory. She had evaded her daughter for days, claiming that there still hadn't been word from Chilton. The papers were locked in Lorelai's desk at the inn. She was going to hand Rory the world on a platter then snatch it away all in the same breath. And because it was Rory, she would take the news stoically and that would make Lorelai feel even worse. The thought brought tears to her eyes, and she furiously blinked them away.

"You OK?"

Of course Mr. Verbose had to notice.

"Yeah. Just …" She flicked her eyes toward Rory. "Mom stuff," she explained with a little shrug.

"Ah." Mr. Verbose gave a jerky little nod, and she noticed he hadn't recoiled at the mentioned of her daughter. That was a plus.

Then they finally arrived at new business. Taylor and Miss Patty had sat behind Harry during the entire meeting, Taylor's foot jiggling with impatience as the mayor worked his way through the agenda. As soon as Harry asked for new business, Taylor sprang to his feet, upsetting his chair in the process.

"I figured you had something to bring up, Taylor," Harry said in his affable manner.

"Taylor always has something to bring up," Lorelai muttered loud enough for Rory to hear. Mr. Verbose as well, apparently, for he gave another snort.

"Thank you, Harry," Taylor began. Lorelai halfway wished she had popcorn, and she had run out of Red Vines a good 40 minutes earlier. "I wanted to bring a matter to everyone's attention, mainly the abandoned William's Hardware building on the town square."

"Here we go again," Gypsy groaned, and half the room agreed with her. Next to Lorelai, Mr. Verbose tensed, and she was struck with the absurd notion of patting him on the arm.

"It has stood abandoned for nine years, six months, and 13 days," Taylor told them. "It is hurting our economy to let such a huge eyesore sit there abandoned. I have personally attempted to contact the current property owner …"

"Bullshit," Mr. Verbose muttered, and Lorelai had to agree with him.

"… And have failed in all of my attempts to reach him."

Lorelai found herself eager to see what response Mr. Verbose would have to that, but he just stared straight ahead. Her gaze dropped to his lap, where his hands had curled into fists. If Taylor had actually attempted to contact Butch, Lorelai would not only eat her favorite winter cap, but Rory's too.

"So, I propose the town's lawyer file for eminent domain of the property, where we could then take over the building and …"

"Where's your proof?" Lorelai shouted.

"You are speaking out of turn, young lady," Taylor replied, but Lorelai ignored him.

"Where's your proof, Taylor? When did you contact Luke Danes? How many times?" It was the first time she'd spoken his real name out loud, and she nearly stumbled to a halt as she said it. But as she stared at her friends and neighbors, she suddenly knew it was the right tactic to take. Butch was this legendary baseball player, but Luke was one of their own. It turned him into a human that she had no memory of, but surely most of the town did. It would work, right? It had to work.

"That information isn't relevant," Taylor was protesting, and Lorelai's attention quickly snapped back to the front of the room.

She scrambled to her feet. "It is when you're trying to steal his dad's property out from under him."

"Well, I suppose you've tried to reach Butch then, have you Lorelai?" Taylor asked in that patronizing tone that set Lorelai's teeth on edge.

"Yes," she shot at him. "I have. Twice."

"Well, then. And what response did you receive?"

Damn it. "Um … his answering machine."

"And did Butch call you back?"

Damn it, _damn it_. "Um … No."

Taylor folded his hands on the lectern, with that little self-satisfied smirk that made her want to smack him. "Well, there you go. If Butch Danes had truly been interested in saving the property, he would had called you back."

"That's because you never left a callback number," Mr. Verbose muttered, but Lorelai barely heard him.

"It's still not right! How would it look in the papers that you stole property from a famous baseball player, huh? Not only that, but he's just as much as Stars Hollow as you are." Lorelai stared Taylor down and would had marched up to the lectern had she not been boxed in by Rory and Mr. Verbose. "Each one of you knows this isn't right, and you know the property is maintained. It's not an eyesore. It's not haunted. It's just waiting for Luke to come home, OK? And he will one day. I know it. So just leave it alone, Taylor."

"Go Mom!" Rory cheered in a whisper as other protests were shouted out.

Lorelai flashed Rory a victory sign, then found her attention drawn back to Mr. Verbose. He was staring at her once more, and it felt like he could see everything about her. If she focused hard enough, she could almost see his eyes through the darkened lenses. She swallowed, then Mr. Verbose's muttered words finally registered.

 _You never left a callback number_.

Oh.

Oh God.

 _Oh my God_.

Lorelai felt her legs nearly give out from beneath her.

Mr. Verbose got to his feet, stripping off the sunglasses, and the entire meeting went silent.

Taylor stood at the lectern, gaping as Mr. Verbose circled around the back of the room and walked up the aisle. He stopped just before the podium, glaring at Taylor in a way that Miss Patty later described as one of the most terrifying (and sexy) things she'd ever seen.

"You," he threatened in a low, rumbling voice, "are not going to touch my dad's property. Ever. And if I find out you've tried, they won't be able to find the body."

He pivoted. Without looking at anyone else in the room, Luke Danes walked out of the meeting.


	3. Chapter 2

The moment Luke was gone, everyone went into an uproar.

"It worked! It worked!" Sookie screamed, lunging over Rory to grab Lorelai in a hug. "You did it!"

"Yeah," Lorelai managed, her focus still on the open door leading out of the dance studio. She couldn't seem to arrange her thoughts in any sort of order, and the general chaos around her wasn't helping at all.

"Wow, Mom. _Wow_." Rory beamed at Lorelai as if she had figured out a way to spin straw into gold.

"How did you ever find him, sugah?" Babette demanded, and Lorelai wasn't even sure when her neighbor had made her way to the back of the room. The last time Lorelai checked, Babette had been with Morey in the front row.

"Order!" Taylor yelled over the din. "I insist we must maintain order!"

"I believe that is my job, Taylor," Harry replied jovially, his voice reflecting no small amount of glee in the fact that Taylor's plan had been thwarted. "Considering that the rightful property owner of William's Hardware has made his wishes clear on the matter, I'm afraid your proposal is no longer on the table. So, this meeting is …"

Harry's words of adjournment were drowned out by an even higher amount of buzz as people talked and talked and talked to the point where Lorelai's head spun. She managed the most basic of responses, evading the pointed questions from Eastside Tilly on how she managed to find Luke. She was still reeling from the heart attack she'd received. Mr. Verbose indeed. No wonder he'd worn the sunglasses. The baggy flannel and backwards baseball cap couldn't hide those blue eyes that anyone in town would have recognized.

And here she had admired his cheekbones.

Rory tugged her purse strap. "Can I go see Lane?" she asked. "Mrs. Kim wouldn't let her skip Bible study for this, and I've got to tell her!"

"Sure, kid. Be back home at 10." Lorelai pressed a kiss to the top of Rory's head and watched as she threaded her way through the crowd and outside. She need to move. She needed some air.

She needed to murder a baseball guy.

Lorelai hastily made her good-byes and bolted, stomping down the sidewalk toward the Crap Shack. Mister-Big-Shot-Who-Does-He-Think-He-Is, making a dramatic entrance all like that. One call. Just one phone call would had resolved this entire fiasco. But no, there had to be a grand, theatrical production. Had he laughed at her phone messages? No, the man probably never laughed a day in his life. Well, screw him.

She found herself outside the hardware store, and not for the first time, she peered through the darkened glass. The empty shelves stood a bit forlorn, and Taylor was right on one thing. There was a lot of potential for this property, and it shouldn't go unused. Too bad the only business Lorelai wanted to go into for herself was running her own inn. That dream was about as distant as sending Rory to Chilton. She resisted the temptation rest her head against the cool glass of the front door. She couldn't think about Chilton now.

She was about to head home when she saw a flash of light from within the building, from the room behind the counter along the side of the front room. She pressed her face to the glass. Definite movement. Her hand dropped to the handle and gave it a light tug. It gave, cracking open just a bit, and she blinked. Then she slipped inside. Carefully, she locked the door behind her to keep over-curious townies that weren't named Lorelai Gilmore out and made her way down the closest aisle toward the counter as the figure who had been wandering in the backroom came out.

In her mind, Lorelai was 20 again, and dealing with a wriggling 3-year-old who wanted to make cancer better with a hug. And, oh, how she wished the world could be that simple. The man that stood at the counter was far younger and more broad-shouldered. The baseball cap had been set aside, and the sleeves of the flannel were rolled up to reveal corded muscle and tanned arms. Her heart promptly tripped over itself. No wonder the guy had his own fan club as far back as high school.

As she approached the counter, Luke met her eyes. Now she could see the annoyance in them. "What're you doing in here?" he barked. His voice was deep and her toes curled. Bad hormones, Lorelai scolded herself.

"The door was unlocked." She gave a wave at the door.

"That doesn't mean it was a blatant invitation to come in."

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Then don't leave the door unlocked."

Luke shrugged and walked away from her toward the stairs. Well, he hadn't bodily thrown her out. That was progress. Lorelai followed him.

"Hey, pal, I deserve more than the guttural grunts and manly moans. Do you realize how close Taylor was to taking this place from you?"

"Why do you think I care?" Luke asked, all but stomping up the stairs.

"Because you and I are standing here arguing about it."

He turned, and Lorelai nearly took a step back in reflex. Why had she followed him so closely? "Maybe I want to sell it and turn it into a place filled with nothing but bouncy castles."

"I like bouncy castles."

"Figures. Goes with the triple chocolate chunk ice cream." Luke fished out a key ring and flipped through it. He unlocked the office door and stood aside. Lorelai just stared for a moment before realizing that he was inviting her in. She walked into a small office with a battered leather couch and and armchair along with a desk, several shelves, and an old refrigerator. It took her a moment to realize that there was a typewriter instead of a computer on the desk because Bill had died before computers had become popular.

Lorelai took the couch and hope she wouldn't regret it. "You really didn't delete my messages?"

Luke leaned against the counter and looked down at her. "You spent two messages waxing on the differences between double chocolate and triple chocolate chunk."

"Um, hello, there is an important difference!" So maybe she had gotten carried away just a bit when she called back on Sunday, but damn it, she was nervous.

"And yet you didn't leave a callback number."

Lorelai narrowed her eyes. "It's 1999, don't you have caller ID? Dial *69? I'm in the phone book!"

"I know that!"

"Hah! You looked me up!" Pleased, Lorelai sat back and pulled her purse into her lap. "This means we can skip past the formal introductions."

"Aw, geez." For a second, whatever shield Luke had thrown up dropped, and he looked truly baffled at her. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, rocking back on his heels. "Look, I appreciate this, Ms. Gilmore."

Lorelai shuddered. "Ugh, don't call me that."

He tilted his head. "What, you're not Lorelai Gilmore?"

"I am, but every time someone says it like that, I'm reminded of my mother. Who insists, by the way, on using the proper _Mrs_., and if anyone deviates, well. You don't want to be the person who deviates."

"What about you?"

Lorelai bestowed him with her sunniest smile. "I'm the person who always deviates."

That's when she learned that Luke Danes could smile. It was there and gone before her brain could fully register it. But it was warm and made him look almost boyish, and more than anything in the world, she wanted to see it again. She wondered what she would need to do to get that to happen.

"Then what do I call you?" Luke asked.

"Just Lorelai." She gave him a flirty grin. "You're pretty polite for a hotshot."

And, just like that, he shut down. The smile dropped, and once again he was the cold, stern man who had greeted her downstairs. Luke pushed off the counter, marching over to the shelves. He yanked an old binder out of its place and started flipping through it. "Do you always hang around like a dog off a leash?" he snarled.

"Yes," Lorelai said, stunned. What had just happened? They had been talking, and it was bordering suspiciously on flirting, and suddenly he shut off again. What was wrong with this guy? She was moments away from getting to her feet, from making her excuses and fleeing when he spoke up once more.

"Why were you crying earlier?"

"What?"

"The meeting," Luke said, his focus still on the binder. "Why were you crying? It wasn't just 'Mom stuff.'"

Lorelai very nearly told him it was none of his business, and that they were deviating from the subject. But, oh god, here was someone who didn't know her. He didn't have any expectations about her, had no opinion about the life she wanted to give her child. So the words spilled out. "I have a kid. Rory. The not-so-tall carbon copy of me sitting on my other side during the meeting. She's 14 and about to start high school. She wants to go to an Ivy League school. Seriously, that's what she wants. I just want her to do what makes her happy, and she wants to go to Harvard or Yale. So, she applied for Chilton. Y'know, the big prep school in Harvard."

Luke looked up from the binder. "Yeah, I've heard of it."

"And she got in."

He set it aside, and that sternness eased just a bit. "You're sad she got in?"

Lorelai stared at her purse. It was easier to say this next part without any sort of eye contact. "I'm sad she got in and we can't afford it."

"Don't they have scholarships for that sort of thing?"

"Yes. Unfortunately, the fact that my last name is Gilmore continues to haunt me." She looked up at him, at the confusion in his eyes. It was better than the blank look he'd sported before. She wondered what, if anything, Bill had told him about her. He probably didn't remember any of it, even if his dad had said something. It had been a decade. "My parents have a ton of money, and everyone assumes that because they do, it means I'm loaded and have easy access."

"No, you don't," Luke immediately replied and won her eternal loyalty in those three words.

"How do you know that?"

He seemed like he wanted to say something, then reversed course. "You wouldn't be crying otherwise."

"True." Lorelai offered him a shaky smile. "Do you have a place to stay?" The suspicion leaped back into his eyes, and she rolled her own before he could put his Mr. Freeze mask back on. "Don't look at me like that. I'm just offering because I'm the manager over at the Independence Inn. Unless something has drastically changed in the past four hours, we have rooms. They're available. But now I'm just tempted to offer you my couch. Gorbachev wouldn't sleep on my couch. Al Gore would take back every planet-saving statement he ever made if it meant avoiding my couch."

Luke visibly relaxed, appearing to find the shelves fascinating once more. "No, I'm just gonna head home. The drive's not bad this time of night. Thanks, though."

"All right. Then, I'll just leave you to it." A thousand other questions leaped into her mind all at once, but it felt like she was dealing with a skittish animal. Let's not scare off the prodigal son before he keeps Taylor from turning the hardware store into Stars Hollow's 14th collectible plate store. Lorelai got to her feet and fixed her purse strap across her chest. "Are you coming back?"

"Yeah." Luke returned his attention to her, giving her one of those intense looks she suspected he was giving her all through the town meeting. "I took a few days off work," he finally said. "Just through Thursday. The team's in Baltimore, so I sat this series out so I could take care of this."

"OK." Lorelai looked around the office and saw an pencil and pad of paper still sitting on the desk. She walked over and flipped past inventory lists and reminders to a blank page. She scribbled down her landline and cell numbers, then tore the paper off. "Here. Callback numbers." She flashed him a smile as she handed him the paper. "Now you won't have to dial 867-5309 and hope that you get lucky."

"Sleep well when you get there, Luke." She headed for the door.

"Lorelai?"

"Yeah?" She looked over her shoulder. Luke wasn't smiling at her, but he wasn't frowning either. If anything, he seemed a bit pensive.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"You don't call me Butch," Luke blurted as she opened the office door.

Lorelai glanced over her shoulder again. "But you're not Butch, are you?" She headed down the stairs, restraining the urge to glance over her shoulder to see his reaction.

* * *

Luke didn't bother to look at the clock when he finally let himself into his side of the duplex. A quick sweep of the downstairs revealed that Hurricane Liz and Tropical Storm Jess hadn't made their way through the connecting door that evening, so he trudged upstairs. He stripped off clothes as he walked through his bedroom to the bathroom, leaning against the shower door for support as he twisted the knobs. He considered the direction his thoughts had taken during the 90-minute drive back to Boston, then turned the hot water almost off.

The blast of cold shook him awake, and he found himself staring at his reflection in the small mirror that was suctioned to the tile to make shaving easier. What the hell was he thinking, going into Stars Hollow like that? It was all so stupid. One call to his lawyer, and Taylor Doose's efforts would had been stopped in their tracks. But no, his curiosity had to get the better of him, and he found himself driving down the interstate toward the place where he'd grown up for the first time in nearly a decade. Besides, it was his dad's property, and he had to man up and take care of things himself.

Lorelai Gilmore. Luke knew more about her than he let on. He _had_ to know more about her. He'd been burned far too badly to take the word of a total stranger who rambled on his answering machine about her teenage daughter, ice cream, and a number of other things. He wonder if she was fully aware of what all she'd told him in the messages that used up two cassettes in his answering machine.

He had used one of the computers at the clubhouse to run a basic internet search on her. It revealed she was the manager of the Independence Inn, that she had a daughter named Rory, and she was the child of wealthy Hartford socialites. That said absolutely nothing about her personality, of course. But there had been a picture of her on the Independence Inn's website, and Luke had looked twice. Then he closed the browser window as fast as he could and distracted himself with practice.

The following day, he picked up the phone and called his mother's best friend.

Mia owned the Independence Inn, and it took talking to her for all of two minutes to realize who Lorelai was. A one-time maid just a few years younger than himself. She had a baby at age 16 then left home a year or so later, settling in Stars Hollow and going to work at the inn. His dad had always referred to them as Mia's girls, and so he failed to make the connection between the rambling woman on the phone and the girl and toddler who visited his dad in the months before he died.

Mia confirmed everything Lorelai's messages had conveyed. Taylor Doose was looking for legal loopholes in an attempt to take over the old hardware store and finally found a plausible one. She spent considerable time gushing about Rory and vouching for Lorelai's character.

"She's not out for money," she told him. "If she wanted that, she could had remained in Hartford. She's not Anna."

No one could be Anna, Luke thought bitterly as he reached for the body wash. He closed his eyes and thought of curly hair that brushed past her shoulders and blue eyes a few shades darker than his own. Lorelai sparkled and laughed, and she had sat through the town meeting exchanging rapid-fire quips with her daughter and Sookie St. James the entire time.

He wondered what else lay behind her mask.

Lorelai had one. It took one to know one. Luke had perfected his over the years and had trained himself to spot the ones others wore. He wasn't about to be caught off-guard, not again. So he watched as she wore that cheerful mask of hers, wondering what secrets she hid from the world. Then she cried, thinking no one had seen. But he had seen her mask crack.

It had dropped again when she followed him into the hardware store. He had left the door unlocked, prepared to put up with shenanigans from the townies if they came wandering in but hoped she would come. And she had. Then she confided in him about her worries over her daughter, and he felt ashamed. Every time she edged toward flirting, he backed away. Then she backed away as well. A complicated dance that resulted in the one thing that floored him.

She called him by his real name.

There weren't many people who used it. Mia called him by his formal name, and Luke allowed it because it was Mia. Liz and Jess did, of course, but they were his family.

Now there was Lorelai Gilmore. She had addressed the town using his real name and had used it with him. She had stared straight into his eyes, almost like she could see behind the sunglasses he wore, and he felt her picking apart his own mask as well.

Luke climbed out of the shower, hitching a towel around his waist before collecting the dirty clothes he left strewn about. He dumped them in the hamper in his closet and lay spread eagle on the bed, not bothering to reach for his sweats. The night was warm, and he was content to sleep exactly like this.

He let his mind drift, hoping for at least a couple hours of sleep before morning. He really had behaved like an ass. She didn't deserve it. All she'd done was the right thing. There were still good people in the world, he knew this. It was just baffling when he ran into one of them. Still, his dad would be furious if he knew Luke had treated Lorelai the way he had. He would make it up to her. It was time to pull his head out of his ass and do something with that Stars Hollow property before Taylor Doose tried something again. There was one cold, hard truth: there was no way in hell that Taylor was going to get his hands on his dad's place.

Maybe, Luke thought as he slid into the dream, he could make Lorelai something.

They were back in the hardware store, upstairs in that office, arguing over her messages and the building. He was still clad in his towel, and she was on top of him, her hands peeling away the layers of cotton around his waist. The worn leather of the sofa stuck to his back as she moved above him, her curls framing her small, naked breasts. He was inside her, hands digging into the dip of her waist as she rolled her hips, and he gave himself over to the pleasure. She smiled down at him in a way that he knew was for him and him alone. And she leaned forward, whispering his name in his ear as he lost the ability to think at all.

He woke gasping for air, his hand beneath the towel, his body quaking from the aftermath of his dream. His alarm blared, and the red lights mocked him. How much sleep had he had? Any?

Luke slapped at the alarm until silence filled the room and pulled the towel off. He stomped into the bathroom for his second shower of the day, this one good and hot. He ignored the rings beneath his eyes and decided to skip shaving.

He should be celebrating. For the first time since Anna, he wanted someone. He honestly thought at one point that particular part of himself had been shut off permanently. With what happened, it was hard to argue against it. The only way to prevent a repeat of the entire fiasco was to simply not have sex.

But apparently that part of him hadn't died after all. And it wanted a single mom in his hometown who was hell bent on poisoning herself with junk food. A witchy woman with black curls and blue eyes who made him smile.

 _"I'm the person who always deviates."_

He was so fucked.

* * *

 _Author's note: Thank you all so much for the kind reviews on the first chapter of the story! I'm sorry it took so long to get this one posted. I'm traveling in Canada right now and will be heading back to the States on Monday. But for now, I am enjoying Toronto - one of my favorite cities on the planet!_


	4. Chapter 3

Oh boy. _Oh boy._

Lorelai woke from the dream with her thin summer PJs plastered to her as she struggled to catch her breath. For the first time ever, she was grateful Rory hadn't decided to crawl into bed with her, because that would had been a dozen different kinds of awkward.

Her dreams were normally fluffy ones that edged on the utterly bizarre. They were strange enough that she and Rory often shared a good laugh, pretending to be amateur Freuds. Lorelai could psychoanalyze this one on her own perfectly well, thank you very much. Summary: Get laid. Or in lieu of that, get a vibrator. Sex toys were also off the list when one had a kid that was more than happy to root through her mother's nightstand to look for stuff. Granted, Lorelai only had herself to blame there. More than a decade of sharing extremely closing living quarters with Rory had kept Lorelai from making certain purchases.

Maybe it was time to get a nightstand that locked.

She rolled onto her stomach, burying her head in her pillow. She never had sex dreams. Well, almost never. It was maybe once a year, and they were usually twisted up with the bizarre. But this one was a good, old-fashioned hot-and-sweaty getting-it-on scene that seemed to be lifted from the pages of a romance novel. This is what happens when you spend your evening egging on really hot, yet obstinate guys, Lorelai told herself. She levered herself onto her arms, pushing her hair out of her eyes and debated whether to quickly take matters into her own hands to finish out the dream or take a cold shower. Or combine option A with option B. That was probably the best choice.

Rory's voice floated up the stairs, along with the scent of something delicious. Lemon, sugar, and _coffee_. Oh, sweet, sweet nirvana. Sookie, bless her amazing heart. Suddenly ravenous, Lorelai rolled out of bed and snagged a robe. She didn't bother belting it as she sailed down the stairs. "Sook, you are the bestest friend ever whose name isn't Rory Gilm …" She drew up short when she saw Rory sitting at the table, something buttery yellow on a plate in front of her as she chatted with a person who was _definitely_ not Sookie. Her jaw dropped.

They looked up from whatever they were discussing at the table. Her daughter and the baseball guy, both giving her quizzical looks that made her wonder if she looked as deranged as she felt.

Luke stood, shifting a bit apprehensively as Rory leaped from her seat.

"Mom, Mom, you have _got_ to try this! Luke made this!" Rory shoved a hunk of that yellow goodness in Lorelai's hand, and she realized it was some sort of small cinnamon roll.

She ignored the food for the moment to address the town's living legend, who had somehow found his way into her kitchen. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I was just …," Luke started to explain.

"Mom, _try it_ ," Rory cut in.

She took a bite. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head as the slightly bitter taste of lemon was immediately cut by the sugar and the softness of the dough. "You can bake?"

The angry guy from the previous visit was gone, and Luke looked equal parts painfully shy and very arrogant. He shrugged. "Yeah, a lot of people bake."

"I don't bake. She doesn't bake." Lorelai pointed to Rory. "Our speciality is mac and cheese."

"On really special occasions, we go straight for the Velveeta," Rory informed him.

Lorelai took another bite and moaned. "I need a moment with this thing. What is it?"

"Lemon pull-apart bread."

Lorelai scoffed. "Pal, this isn't bread. It's heaven."

Luke turned away and … was he _blushing_? He fiddled with the coffeemaker and handed her a mug. "Here, wash it down at least. I heard a rumor you're addicted to this stuff."

"Right. First I am going to praise you for knowing the proper order of things in the Gilmore kitchen." Lorelai took a swallow of coffee, and before she could list the other thing on her mind, she experienced her second culinary orgasm of the morning. She gawked at the coffee, at him, then back at the coffee. "What the … how did … what _are_ you?"

"The Food God," Rory said solemnly. "We can never let him leave this house again."

She downed the rest of the coffee in one swallow and lunged for the coffeemaker.

"Geez, lay off. That stuff's bad enough for you as is."

"You started it." She took a sip of caffeine ambrosia, and noticed Luke averting his gaze once more. What, did she spill coffee down her … Lorelai looked down to see her unbelted robe with her PJs that were so old they were practically see-through. And her breasts were making it known in a really visible way that having a guy who could bake and make the coffee of the gods was well appreciated in her kitchen. Rory, who was no help at all, was too busy stuffing her face while reading her book.

"Sorry," Lorelai whispered and put the mug down long enough to belt the robe.

"No, no, it's fine."

Were you looking, she wondered, briefly meeting his gaze. Luke's eyes had gone dark, but that was the only indication her unintended show had had any affect on him. "So, what brings you back to Stars Hollow?"

Luke shifted from foot to foot, then turned away from her. Snagging one of the dishes she and Rory had stacked up in the sink after pizza and leftovers night, he turned on the tap. "Nothing really."

Lorelai leaned against the counter, hands wrapped around her coffee mug, and watched as he grabbed the sponge and scowled at it before sticking it under the faucet. "Right. Uh huh. Sure, I believe you. Do we believe him, Rory?"

"Not for a second." Rory finished her food and licked her fingers before reaching for a napkin to wipe the rest off.

Lorelai waved her mug. "See? Kid and I don't buy it."

"Geez," Luke muttered, and his nervousness was endearing. And, it was also getting the dishes clean. "Look, I wasn't raised to treat women the way I treated you Tuesday night, so I wanted to apologize."

"You mean your default mode isn't grumpy and surly?"

"It is," he admitted, "but I don't have to make you grumpy and surly along with me."

She took another sip of coffee, mulling it over. Yes, he had been a bit bizarre, but she had dates that were far worse. "Huh. You weren't that bad."

"Yeah, I was at times." Luke's eyes met hers. "It wasn't your fault."

Now she was just confused. "OK. OK, good to know. Thanks."

The kitchen lapsed into silence other than the rattling of dishes and the slight thunk of Rory's mug whenever she took a sip from it. Guilt led Lorelai to grab a towel from the laundry room so she could help dry. She wondered if it had ever been this silent in the house other than when she was alone or they were asleep. Even when she was alone, there was some sort of noise in the background. But it wasn't entirely horrible.

She studied Luke out the corner of her eye. He wore pretty much the same outfit as from the town meeting, but a bit more weather-appropriate. The jeans were well worn-in, and she deeply appreciated it. The flannel this time was short-sleeved, revealing those same tanned arms she first spotted on the game she watched. Her TV really was terrible, she thought absently. That old set didn't accurately capture the definition of those arm muscles as they flexed. The front was left unbuttoned, revealing a grey T-shirt underneath. He didn't wear a hat this time, and she saw it sitting next to a cloth bag on the counter.

Boxers or briefs, she absently wondered, then nearly hit herself with one of her Betty Boop plates to get her mind back on track.

"I was wondering if we could talk," Luke said after a few minutes as he stacked the last dish in the drying rack.

"Sure." She sounded normal. This was a good thing.

He looked down at the sponge, then neatly 3-pointed it into the trash can. "Get a new sponge. I'm not even sure what all's crawling in that thing. Can you meet me at the hardware store?"

"As soon as I get dressed. It won't take long, we can walk down there together." Lorelai craned her neck to look into the garbage can. Well. He wasn't exactly wrong about the sponge.

"Nah, I'd rather drive over." Luke reached for the sunglasses and the hat, affixing them both the way they were during the town meeting. "Look, I know this place, and the microgoggles will come out soon. But I'd like to talk with you before that happens."

"Because backwards baseball cap and huge sunglasses aren't conspicuous at all?" She smirked when his face twitched. She was positive he was rolling his eyes at her behind the darkened lenses. "Give me 30 minutes?"

"Sure. Just leave this stuff here. There's more coffee in the bag." He beckoned to the cloth bag. "I'll leave the back door unlocked for you. Bye, Rory."

"Bye, Luke!" Rory said without looking up from her book.

When he had disappeared out the back door, Lorelai waited four heartbeats before refilling her mug with more coffee and dropping down to the table across from her daughter. "OK, kid. Eyes up."

"I'm listening," Rory said absently.

Lorelai leaned over and pushed the book down. "Rory."

"Fine, fine." Rory flipped the book shut, her finger marking her place.

"How did baseball guy wind up in here this morning?"

"Through the door," Rory answered primly, and Lorelai had to admire a good round of teenage smart-ass. She winged an eyebrow in response.

"He got here an hour ago and knocked on the back door. I knew who he was, of course. He said he had something for us, to thank you for last night, and then I smelled it." Rory beamed at the rest of the lemon bread. "Mom, how could I turn him away? He had food! Then he made coffee!"

"That's an acceptable reason to let a guy we barely know into the kitchen and not wake me up."

"I tried," Rory said. "You were pretty out of it. You were tossing a bit and moaning."

 _Oh good grief._ Lorelai nearly hit her head on the table.

"I know it's not really a good thing to jerk someone out of a nightmare, but I was about to when you settled down. I came back downstairs and Luke said he was OK with waiting. So we talked."

"You talked?" It took a near act of Congress for Rory to talk with someone she didn't know. Lorelai thought of her toddler daughter and her unusual affection for Bill Danes. Maybe it ran in the family. Some pheromone that caused shy Gilmores to open up.

"He _reads_ , Mom!" Rory's eyes lit up, and she started to wave her hands before remembering she held her book. She fumbled for a bookmark and pushed it into place. "He finished _The Testament_ , and I just read it too, and we were talking about what Troy changing his will did to his family, and how it was pretty good, but nothing really beats _A Time to Kill_. I mean, yeah, it was Grisham's first but it's a classic. Oh, and his nephew is a big reader too, and he's around my age. He lives in Boston with his mom. The nephew that is, Jess."

"Huh." Lorelai wondered when the last time was that Rory said so much at once when it didn't involve the two of them sat in front of the TV watching the annual _A Christmas Story_ marathon.

"He reads a lot because apparently there's a lot of downtime at work, and there's only so much _Need for Speed_ he can stomach, and he doesn't like playing that new _MLB_ game because he lives it."

"Huh," Lorelai repeated, frantically trying to slot the information dump into her mental image of him.

"And then Luke suggested that I try that _Harry Potter_ series that started coming out a couple years ago, since his nephew also read it so he did too. I heard it was really good, and I think if a grown man likes a kid's book then there's something to it. Plus, the third one comes out later this year. Then you came downstairs looking like your hair was caught in the inn's weedwhacker."

"Damn," Lorelai muttered, absently patting her hair.

"He's really nice, Mom," Rory said, getting up from her chair with her empty plate and mug. "I didn't know famous people could be nice."

"Not everyone hails from the pages of the _National Enquirer_ , kid."

"I know, but …" Rory hedged for a bit, then went for the last of the coffee after dumping her plate in the sink. "Lane told me that Luke wants nothing to do with the town. That's what Miss Patty told Gypsy after the town meeting last night, and Babette confirmed it to Mrs. Kim, and Lane overheard. Apparently this is the first time he's been here since his dad died. Lane said she didn't think he was ever outright mean to anyone, but he just didn't like the town. So I thought he'd be kind of snotty. But he's not."

"I'm not exactly Hartford's No. 1 fan," Lorelai pointed out. "Not everyone loves the place where they grew up."

"How could you not love Stars Hollow?" Rory gasped.

Oh to be 14 again, Lorelai thought as she dressed and started out toward the center of town. She didn't think she had ever been this innocent, not even when she was a small child. The unlucky byproduct of being the daughter of Emily and Richard Gilmore.

The Chilton envelope hidden at the inn weighed heavily upon her. Even if she could find the money to send Rory there, Lorelai knew what those schools did to teens. She lived that life once and had spent the last decade ensuring that Rory didn't follow in her footsteps. But Rory was too advanced for Stars Hollow High unless she started skipping grades. She would be bored and miserable there. Chilton would be a different kind of miserable, but it had the educational challenges that Rory craved. Everything in Lorelai screamed to keep Rory from Chilton, but …

Lorelai stopped outside of Weston's and took a slow survey of the town, trying to possibly see it the same way someone like Luke would. Someone who, if the gossip was right, bolted from town and barely gave it a glance in the rearview mirror. It was small, not even 10,000 people. There were the festivals, the town meetings, the quirky business owners that clustered the square. There were all the porcelain unicorn stores and other kitschy tourist traps.

There were the people who accepted teenage Lorelai into their fold and looked out for her and Rory. Miss Patty had heavily discounted dance lessons for Rory when Lorelai could barely afford them. Gypsy had been after Lorelai for years to trade in her beat-up Nissan, which had already been ancient when she bought it. She was just to the point where she could afford payments on a newer car. Maybe Jeep would be nice. But regardless, Gypsy kept her car running. Taylor was nice in his own way. There was Sookie and Mia and the Gleasons. Mrs. Kim and Lane. This was her town, and it was the first place she ever felt like she truly belonged. She loved Rory more than anything, but Stars Hollow definitely ranked in the top 5 of her greatest loves.

With a smile, she ducked down the alley to the back of the hardware store, where a battered green truck sat just outside the back door. She vaguely remember Bill coming out to the inn a couple times in it, when Mia asked him to do some odd repairs around the place before he grew too sick to work. She pushed open the back door to reveal the empty storeroom, a few random boxes scattered over the large space. Her footsteps echoed as she walked through and into the main part of the store.

"Hello?" she called.

Luke's voice came from upstairs. "Up here!"

This time, more of the binders had been pulled from the shelves and lay open on the desk. He had taken up residence on the couch, scribbling something on a legal pad balanced on his knees as he glanced at an open binder beside him. The sunglasses were discarded on the desk, but he kept the hat on this time. Lorelai wondered if she could get into a position to break them. Accidentally, of course. They were Ray-Bans after all. She knew their worth.

He held up a finger as he finished what he was working on, and she saw it was some sort bulleted list. He absently stuck the end of his pencil in his mouth, gnawing on the eraser before adding one more thing. Shifting from one foot to the other, Lorelai decided to perch on the empty armchair before the binders decided to invade it too.

"So, I've had a day or so to think, and I really need to do something with this place," Luke said more to the notepad than to Lorelai herself.

She drummed her fingers on her knees, looking around the office. "Taylor's been lusting after it for years. I think I saw him humping the stairs a few times." The mental image that went along with the quip immediately made her stomach turn, and she regretted ever saying it.

Now Luke looked up from the notepad, eyebrow raised in agreement. Yeah, that was definitely a foot-in-mouth, lose-your-lunch statement. Thankfully, he let it slide. "I can't let him have it, Lorelai. It'd break my dad's heart. Really, I don't want to sell it. He bought the land in cash, put the building up himself because the property here was in such bad shape that it had to come down. He worked in construction."

"Really?" Intrigued, Lorelai leaned forward just a bit.

"Yeah. It looks a lot older than it is." Luke set the legal pad aside and cast a glance around the room, brow furrowed. "He built it about … 35 years ago? He finished it not long before I was born. Made sure it fit in with the existing town architecture. Ever meet Taylor's dad?"

"No." She thought he had died some time after she came to Stars Hollow, but it had been before she and Rory got involved in town life.

"If you think Taylor's bad, well." Luke gave a small shrug. "He got it from his old man. Drove my dad insane when I was a kid."

"Huh." _Circle of Life_ started to play on a loop in her brain.

"Anyhow, I have this property to manage and the house over on Green. My parents' old place. I was kind of hoping my sister would take it over one day. It's why I never let it go either. But, it's time."

It made sense. The words burned in Lorelai's throat. What took so long to come to this decision? What kept him away from Stars Hollow for so long? It couldn't be because of an apparent long-standing feud of a sort between the Danes and the Doose families. She remembered his skittish behavior and decided to shelve her curiosity for the moment. "OK. So what do I have to do with it?"

"I'm thinking of leasing out the hardware store building, and I'm selling the house. I wanted to see if I could hire you to represent me in those matters."

Lorelai jerked back in shock, blinking once. Then twice. Then she shook her head because clearly she had not heard him right. "I'm sorry, what? Don't you have real estate agents for this sort of thing?"

"Yeah, there'll be those. And lawyers and accountants and inspectors and everyone who can possibly overcharge you." Luke removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair, looking everywhere but at her. He sighed, fidgeting with the hat bill. "Look, I haven't lived here since I was 18. I got drafted right out of high school. You know the town better than I do at this point. I don't want someone taking over my dad's place that would tear it up or damage it. Same thing goes for the house. Not quite so much oversight need, but I at least want to know they're not starting some meth lab or anything in there."

Her lips twitched. "In Stars Hollow?"

He rolled his eyes, and she couldn't quite hide her answering smile. "Right. See? It shouldn't take that long. A few weeks, maybe a couple months."

It made sense. It made a lot of sense, actually. What little Lorelai had gleaned of Luke's career indicated that he was on the road a lot, and it was hard to be a landlord while you were hurling pitches off a mound in California. Then she sat up straight and thought of Chilton. "How much?"

"How much would you charge?"

Lorelai rattled off the amount of Rory's tuition for the first year at Chilton.

Luke shrugged. "OK."

She gaped at him. "OK? Really?"

"If that's what you want."

Lorelai narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Look, pal, I essentially just went for highway robbery, and you said OK?"

Luke gave a bitter chuckle. "Never hired a lawyer, have you?"

Her gut churned and she _knew_. "You knew I was going to ask for that, didn't you?"

Luke got to his feet, pacing to the window. "I wasn't born yesterday," he said sarcastically. "I do know how to use a search engine."

She leaped to her feet, all rage and fury as she stormed to his side. "I didn't blurt out my problems to you so you can take me on as some charity case."

"Lorelai, that's not what it-"

She jabbed a finger in his chest, poking him until he backed up a step in reflex. "I have been on my own for over 13 years now, and I will make my own way. I don't need a bunch of cash thrown at me by some rich guy trying to appease his conscience!"

"For God's sake, Lorelai, would you just listen?" Luke reached for her, seemed to remember himself, then let his hands drop. Surprised, she backed up, realizing for the first time how close they were standing. They stared at each other for a few heavy moments, and she wondered what would happen if he stepped forward again.

He placed his hands on his hips and stared at the floor, taking several deep breaths before speaking again. "I'm not trying to belittle you, and I don't think you were looking for a handout. I need to do something with the house and the hardware store, and even after the store's rented out, someone needs to act as landlord. You'd be earning every cent of that money, and I grilled Mia about you. You have the skills to do this."

"You barely know me!" Lorelai protested.

"I know enough about you. You didn't think I didn't bother to see who the hell you were before I drove here?" He scowled as she kept her suspicious gaze on him. "Mia, your boss? She was my mom's best friend."

"Shut up," Lorelai snapped and turned away from him.

"But …"

"Just please. _Shut up_." She squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the silence that settled in. The room was quiet, but her brain was loud, and everything was one jumbled mass of confusion. And it wasn't helping that her hormones were sending her brain alternate versions of their fight. No, discussion. No, it was a fight. Ish. "I need to think about this."

"OK. That's fine."

She turned back to him. "Thank you. How long are you staying?"

Luke waved at the binders. "I'm gonna finish going through these old books. Property taxes and all should be up-to-date, but things like building inspections and the like I need to pull for repairs and whatever the money-grabbers will need for the sale."

* * *

"He what the _what_?" Sookie shrieked as Lorelai finished telling her what had happened in town. Sookie's spatula fell from suddenly slack fingers into her mixing bowl and slowly sank to the bottom of the batter she had been mixing.

"Offered me a job to be his representative in Stars Hollow," Lorelai repeated. "I'd oversee the renting of hardware store building and selling the house. I'd be acting as landlord in his name for the store. I just … What do you think, Sook?"

"Take the job, Lorelai," Sookie said without hesitation.

Lorelai drank the coffee she held like it was wine and wished it was a martini. "I can't take the job," she protested.

Sookie gaped at her. "Why not? It's either take the job, go to your parents, or tell Rory she can't go to Chilton. Lorelai, it's $25,000, and it just won't be the one year. Manage that property for the next four years, and you have Chilton made. Longer, and you could help get Rory through Harvard or whatever school she wants. You'd be working for the money, you're personally interested in the property, and he's gorgeous."

"Sookie," Lorelai sighed.

"Just saying." Sookie frowned at her batter, then moved to the sink to pour out the batter so she could rescue the spatula. She got more of the batter on her apron than in the sink. "Lorelai, why do you really not want to take this job?"

 _Because_ , Lorelai thought as she headed to her office, _I had a sex dream about Luke, and I thought at one point he was going to kiss me in his dad's old office, and it all bothers me in more ways than one_. She locked the door so Michel wouldn't barge in on her and sat at her desk. Mia's old desk before she moved to California. She swiveled back and forth in the chair, staring blindly at the papers strewn across the top. She reached in her drawer and pulled out the Chilton envelope, tossing it on top of the stack of invoices from the inn's linen supplier. All of her daughter's dreams were in that envelope. Sookie was right. The only way they could even begin to afford Chilton without going to her parents was if Lorelai took on a second job.

And Luke was right himself. She had the background for this job. She oversaw the inn and knew what went into inspections, building repairs, handling the financials, things like that. The building needed a spruce, and she could oversee that. It would be challenging, but not completely drain her the way any other second job would. She could do it from home. All the pros aligned themselves on one side of the brain, but the con. Oh, the con. She couldn't work for the guy and dream about him nailing her against a wall.

Who was she kidding? Baseball puns aside, he was out of her league in every single sense of the word. He made it clear he wanted to spend as little time in Stars Hollow as possible, and her entire life was here. His world didn't appeal to her. They had nothing in common. Well, except their apparent love of Mia. And he somehow made the best coffee on the planet despite not drinking it. What was up with that? And that bread-cake-walking orgasm thing he made? How the hell did he have time to _bake_? And he somehow connected with Rory, and that was just mind-boggling.

Right, Lorelai told herself and mentally shoved all those dangerous thoughts into a box, then that box into a small box, then that box into the tiniest box imaginable and shoved it into the back corner of her mind. Then she grabbed the Chilton envelope.

She bypassed the hardware store and went straight to the house, where Rory was on the couch reading _The Great Gatsby._

"Hey, Mom," Rory said absently, not looking up from her book.

"Hey, kid! Guess what?" Lorelai waved the envelope. "You're going to Chilton!"

* * *

 _Author's note: The recipe that Luke bakes for Lorelai and Rory is "Lemon Roll Pull-Apart Bread" from the Taste and Tell blog. I had just made this recipe myself when working on the first part of this chapter, and it is every bit as good as Lorelai describes. Go Google and drool._


	5. Chapter 4

_July 1999_

"Email."

"No."

"Yes."

"Lorelai."

"Luke."

"I'm not getting one."

Lorelai lay on the sofa, kicking her feet over the side, the cordless phone tucked beneath her chin as she dug into a box of Cracker Jack. "Then how else am I going to send you paperwork that needs looking over or a list of things that need to be done with the hardware store and the house. Do you carry a fax machine on the road with you?"

"We lived thousands of years before email, and we'll keep living after it."

"I can't believe your team hasn't supplied you with an email account." The silence from Luke's end was suspiciously long and confirmed her hunch. "Ah ha, they _have!_ What is it?"

"You're not sending me email at work. It's just for team stuff. I don't even have a computer at home. I just check it at the clubhouse."

"Even at the clubhouse in … where are you at right now?" Lorelai craned her neck at the TV, which was tuned to the ESPN channel she recently acquired. It was part of a good deal on cable, so why not? That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

"Chicago."

Lorelai pushed into a sitting position, Cracker Jack forgotten. "Oh, can you bring back a deep dish pizza?"

"What?"

She grinned, picturing his bafflement. "What about an Italian beef sandwich? I've always wanted to try one."

"Lorelai, I'm not your delivery boy," Luke snapped.

Lorelai wrapped an errant curl around her finger. "So … no Vitners?"

"Good night, Lorelai," Luke said firmly.

"Get an email!" she repeated before the call disconnected.

Lorelai turned off the phone and tapped it against her knee. It was 11:30, but it was a Friday night and she wasn't tired yet. Besides, Friday nights were made expressively for staying up late.

The property manager thing was going well so far. Hopefully. She announced she was accepting applications during the town meeting just a couple days earlier, and already she had dozens to sift through. Even people as far away from Hartford had heard about the hardware store being up for rent, and it was mind-boggling how many people wanted a part of the building just because of the connection to the owner.

Her own connection to the owner was … interesting. The day after she accepted the job, she met Luke in Hartford to open a business account, then argued over seed money until the bank manager pointed out that Lorelai needed to have some funds on hand for repairs. He came back to Stars Hollow on his one day off the following week so they could go over a list of what needed to be done. Tom was summoned to the Crap Shack, where he was hired to make sure both the house and the hardware store were ready to go on their respective markets.

That visit was the first sign of hero worship that Lorelai had seen from the town since the meeting Luke had crashed. She supposed it was always there - a low buzz of conversation that never quite registered because it had to with sports. And Luke had gone out of his way to avoid interacting with the town during his previous visits other than to tell Taylor off. But Tom had spent the entire time staring at Luke with a combination of pride and nervous awe. They wound up talking stats while Lorelai flipped through a home renovation magazine and dreamed of cookies.

And they talked. Every day. Ten days since the first town meeting, and it felt like Lorelai had known Luke for far longer. She wanted to say it was because they needed to get this business taken care of before Taylor decided on another way to swipe the building and the land, but more often than not, she wasn't the one initiating the phone calls. It was nice. It'd be nicer if Rory hadn't started to tease that Luke was her boyfriend. Which he was _not_ , thank you very much. The large check Lorelai had dropped off at the Chilton front office earlier that day spoke to the not-boyfriend nature of their relationship. So there.

The phone rang again, and Lorelai glanced at the caller ID and answered. "Gilmore's House of Horrors."

"You don't have a computer," Luke said.

"What?"

"Email. You told me to get an email address, but I didn't see a computer when I was at your house."

Oh, round 2. Lorelai settled in. "I have a computer at the inn."

"Then what's _your_ email address?"

"I have one through the inn's website," Lorelai informed Luke in her most authoritative voice and rattled the address off.

She could almost hear him rolling his eyes, if such a thing was possible. "You want me to get an email address, but you don't even have one of your own."

"I have that one through work, just like you do."

"Which is for _work_."

Lorelai shook her head and rooted for the Cracker Jack box. "Mia doesn't care."

"If I have to do this, so do you."

"Fine. I'll get a personal email," she huffed.

"And a computer."

It was a good thing she hadn't found the Cracker Jack yet, because otherwise she would had choked on the sweet caramel popcorn goodness. "Um, hello? Not made of money here, and don't you even offer."

"It'd help Rory at Chilton."

Lorelai sighed and gave up. She leaned back and felt the Cracker Jack box crunch beneath her back. Oh, there it was. "Right in the logic bone. Fine, we'll get a computer, and an email address, and so do you."

"Fine."

Lorelai fished the box out from beneath her, gazing sadly at the crumpled cardboard. It was usually the point where their calls ended. It was like a never-ending stream of consciousness that was driving up both their long distance bills. She needed to grab a calling card the next time she was at Doose's. "What's Chicago like?"

Luke was silent for a moment, and she wondered if he was as surprised by the question as she. She heard shuffling on his end and the soft snick of blinds as they were moved aside. "Suppose it's like any big city. They start to blur together after awhile."

"I suppose. The last time I went into any city was New York last year. Rory and I try to go once a year right before school starts."

"Not Boston? It's closer."

Lorelai smiled. "You'd think, but Rory loves the Strand."

"It's a pretty cool place," Luke agreed.

Her smile grew wider. "I think Rory's met her match in you."

"She hasn't met my nephew. He could read us all under the table."

When she thought he was about to end the call, he suddenly said, "Is that ESPN I hear back there?"

"Oh." Lorelai looked at the TV, then fumbled for the remote. "Yeah, I just had the TV on. Wanted some noise. Rory's spending the night with her best friend." She hesitated, then gave in. "They had your game on. You did well. Scored a lot of goals."

He chuckled. "Runs. Goals is hockey or soccer."

"Huh." And that's why the commentator hadn't made any sense.

"And it's not touchdowns either," Luke teased.

Lorelai stuck her tongue out at the phone. When the teasing changed to laughter, she very nearly disconnected the call. "Where do you go after this?"

She heard the blinds shuffle again. Closing them probably. A couple of soft thunks later, and she heard the creak of a mattress. She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts not to divert.

"Tampa, then Atlanta. We won't be back for another 10 days."

Oh. Something twisted deep in her chest, and Lorelai absently found herself rubbing her breastbone. "That's a long time. Do you get any time off?"

"A couple days. I'll have one off in Tampa, and again in Atlanta."

Lorelai opened her mouth.

"I am _not_ sending you a key lime pie."

She pouted and opened her mouth again.

"Or Goo Goo Clusters."

"What good are you?" Lorelai huffed.

Early Monday afternoon, the FedEx deliveryman walked into the front lobby of the Independence Inn bearing a large styrofoam cooler that Lorelai recognized as a dry ice container. Some of Sookie's special-order ingredients came in those, and they were always stupid expensive. Lorelai bit back a sigh as the deliveryman made a beeline for the desk. She needed to remind Sookie to get her approval before blowing budget on something extravagant.

"Heya, Nick. Sookie's in the kitchen. You can just take it back there."

"This one's actually for you," the deliveryman told her and passed over the clipboard.

Puzzled, Lorelai held the receipt and watched him walk out. "I didn't order anything," she said to the empty lobby at large, then hauled the cooler to the kitchen.

"I didn't order anything, I swear," Sookie immediately began as Lorelai thumped the cooler on one of the prep tables.

"This one's actually for me."

Intrigued, Sookie abandoned the dessert she was concocting and managed not to upset her mixing bowl in the process. "Ooh, what is it?" She fished a small utility knife out of her apron.

Lorelai accepted it and cut through the seals. The lid came off in a burst of steam. She set it aside, and her heart promptly tripped over itself as she lifted the flat package out.

"What is that?" Sookie asked. "Is that a frozen pizza?"

"A deep dish pizza from Chicago," Lorelai said in wonder.

"Oh?" Sookie scrutinized Lorelai's face, then her own lit up. " _Oh!"_

Lorelai couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

* * *

For as long as Luke could remember, he loved baseball.

Weeks after his mother was diagnosed with the cervical cancer that would kill her, he was enrolled in Little League. As an adult, he knew exactly what his parents were doing - trying to get him out of the house, away from the illness that would consume his mother. At the time, he just found himself among a bunch of his classmates, eager to pretend to be Jackie Robinson or Babe Ruth. One of the greats.

Each kid got a chance to try pitching, and the moment the ball was pressed into his hand, Luke felt the taste of freedom for the first time.

The game became everything. Was everything. It was how he got through his mother's death. It was how he got through Liz's spiral into drugs and alcohol, through her pregnancy at age 19. It was how he coped with Rachel leaving. It was how he got through his father's cancer, his death. It was the only way he managed to get through when Anna Nardini turned his life to complete and utter shit.

He heard the whispers around him, especially when he was younger. He needed to talk, to go into therapy. Don't be stupid, Luke thought scornfully and put in another hour at practice.

When he stood on the mound, stadium lights or sunlight streaming down, there were no problems. It was him and the game, and nothing else mattered.

Except maybe during the past 10 days.

Ten games on the road with six losses. Two of those he didn't have a hand in, and he had the boxes of Goo Goo Clusters to prove it. But the others, well. Those were on him.

Luke tried not to think too hard about it on the flight from Florida to Boston. His book lay unopened in his lap as he looked out the window, secretly counting every second until his feet were firmly back on the ground. Fourteen years of this, and he had yet to stop dreading every time he stepped on an airplane.

There were a lot of factors that went into each game, and the collapse of any single one would bring the entire thing down. The beauty of baseball, unlike most sports, was that you had the chance to prove yourself again on a near-daily basis. In a lot of fans' minds, the only games that truly counted were the playoffs and World Series.

But not in his. You stood on the mound, and you were the leader of the team. You were the face of it, the one person picked to bring down the other team, strike after strike. It was a responsibility he took seriously. Even when the team lost, he knew he had given it his best. But not this time. Not this week. Not even when Anna had shown her true colors had he faltered in this area.

Luke already knew he would be facing a battery of physical exams and discussions with his coaches to make sure nothing was wrong with him physically. And stern reminders that whatever was affecting him mentally needed to be shelved.

The last time he played this badly was when his father died.

Maybe that was it, he reasoned as he escaped upon landing before he could be cornered. He never finished settling his father's estate, and the visits to Stars Hollow were scraping at his past. If pressed, that was the reason he would give.

He certainly wouldn't say that at one point, he caught sight of a dark-haired woman with curly hair on the sidelines that caused his pitch to go wild. Or at another point, he remembered that the deep dish pizza would be on her doorstep and how did she like it? Or he had stayed up far too late on his final night in Atlanta because she talked him into playing the "last letter" game, and both of them had proven far too good at it and wound up falling asleep on the phone together.

His long distance charges from this trip were going to be astronomical.

He was grabbing his duffel out of the trunk when Jess came out the front door of Liz's half of the duplex. His nephew's necktie hung loose around his neck, and his backpack hung off one shoulder. Summer classes, Luke remembered. Jess had signed up for some to prepare for the standardized testing he would face within the next few years. The advantages of attending a private school that ran more like a college.

"Hey," Jess said, loping up to him, flicking a glance at the darkening sky. "Any chance for a ride?"

His exhaustion ran bone-deep, but Luke tossed the duffel back in the trunk. The school wasn't that far. "Yeah, hop in." He unzipped one side of the duffel, grabbed a shopping bag, then got back in the car and handed it over as Jess buckled his seatbelt.

"If your mom asks," Luke told Jess as he peeked into the bag, "I did not give those to you."

"Which one? _Hannibal_ or the Hemingway?"

"The first. You can show her the Hemingway."

Jess rolled his eyes and stashed the books in his bag. "Look, just because the school called that one time …"

"After you terrified your teacher into therapy because of your book report on _Silence of the Lambs_."

"If they can't handle critical analysis of Hannibal Lecter's motives, then they shouldn't be teaching."

It was hard to argue with that.

They pulled into the circular drive, Luke swung to the curb and glanced at the tie. "You gonna do up that thing?"

"Eventually," Jess hedged. "Hate this stupid thing."

"Tell me about it."

"You're the one who sent me here."

"And you're the one who chose to take these summer classes."

Jess snorted and started to open the door. He frowned at the stately brick building. "I don't have to go out for sports, do I?"

"No. Why?"

"I keep getting these coaches dropping by class, saying I should try out for cross country this fall. Or get a head start on track or baseball in the spring." Jess gave Luke a significant look, and he knew why. Jess and Liz still used Mariano as their last name, but everyone knew who Jess' uncle was.

"Want me to talk to them?"

"Nah, I can handle it. I just figured you oughta know."

Because the phone calls would come next, if it was true to form. It happened when Jess and Liz moved in and he was enrolled in elementary school. It happened again when Jess moved to public junior high, then the middle grades section of the private school. It was a burden he didn't wish for his nephew.

Luke managed to make it into the duplex the second go-around, dumping his duffel on the couch and fishing out the Goo-Goo Clusters. He put one box on the table and the other on the counter as his sister came through the door that connected the two halves of the duplex.

"Hey, could you make some coffee?"

He slanted her a dirty look. "Hi. Nice to see you. How was your trip? Gee, you look tired, why don't you get some sleep?"

Liz rolled her eyes as Luke opened a cabinet, pulling down coffee beans and spices. "I know how your trip went. And you're not gonna sleep because you don't believe in naps."

Sisters were annoying. Especially when they were right. So he glowered at her as he ground beans and added spices to Liz's liking. She tended to go heavier on the nutmeg.

Lorelai, he thought absently, had loved the cinnamon.

"You hate these things," Liz said as she tore into one of the boxes of Goo Goo Clusters he left on the table as the coffee percolated.

"Just felt like bringing them back, that's all." Luke considered laundry, then decided it could wait a bit. Still, he needed to keep busy, or he'd wind up asleep and his body clock would never reset. He went back to the duffel, pulling a folded page out of one of the pockets. He frowned at the recipe he'd torn from the in-flight magazine on the way back to Boston. It was a recipe for deep dish apple pie, and it made him think of that deep dish pizza. He went back to the still-open cabinet and squinted at the spices.

"Uh huh. So is she pretty?"

Luke jerked back, slamming his head into the open cabinet door. Cursing under his breath, he slammed it shut. "What?"

Liz rolled her eyes. "You think I don't know how you act around girls you like?"

"Liz," he sighed.

"They're speculating on SportsCenter what's got you off your game, brother. Nothing ever gets you off your game, and believe me, they ran off the whole list." Liz absently played with the handle of her coffee mug. "They're never going to forget it, aren't they?"

Luke gave a bitter snort. "No one's ever gonna forget it. They might as well carve it on my grave."

Liz snorted as well. She bit into a Goo Goo Cluster, laid it on the wrapper, then headed for the fridge.

"What makes you think the milk in there's any good?" Luke asked as he took the recipe and a grocery list to the table.

"It is because I put in there." Liz hefted the gallon and fetched a mug for her coffee. "Want some?"

"Sure. Don't you have your own refrigerator?" he asked as she pulled down a glass for him.

"Science project." At her brother's winged eyebrow, she rolled her eyes. "Actual, on-purpose science project. Jess is doing something on seeing what food will mold the fastest. So, since you weren't here, I've been keeping the food we actually use over here."

Well at least his sister was nice enough to not have his refrigerator be the mold incubator. She nudged a glass under his nose, and he pushed it to the side.

Liz took her seat again, picking up the Goo Goo Cluster. "The mail's over there," she said, indicating the place where she left mail stacked when he was gone. "I took care of the gas and water bills."

"Thanks. I'll grab the electricity."

"You might wanna look over the phone bill. There's a lot of long distance calls on there this month."

"Stars Hollow, remember?"

"Yeah, I figured." Liz dunked the Goo Goo Cluster in her coffee and took a bite. She wrinkled her nose, then took another bite. "Don't dunk it in coffee," she warned Luke as he sat opposite her with the mail, recipe forgotten for the moment.

"Sure, I'll keep it in mind the next time I drink coffee. Which is on this side of never."

"Hey, it's my job to impart my wisdom onto you."

"Your 18 months of advanced wisdom," he said dryly, pulling the phone bill out of the open envelope.

Liz took another bite. "So, who's Lorelai Gilmore?"

Luke just stared at her.

Liz rolled her eyes and shuffled through the mail until she uncovered an envelope from Bank of America with the ATM card that came with the joint business account he had set up with Lorelai. Both of their names were printed on the envelope.

He glared at her, then took the envelope. "She's the person I hired to oversee the Stars Hollow properties. The one who called about Taylor trying to seize the store."

"Oh, answering machine lady!" Liz grinned. "I like her."

Liz had actually been the first to listen to Lorelai's messages, since she screened Luke's calls while he was away. She left a note on top of the answering machine telling him to listen to them all the way through. And he had. Four times. It was about the only way to absorb Lorelai's rapid-fire speech and info dump. In the weeks since, he had grown accustomed to the way she talked.

Too accustomed, actually. Luke abandoned the mail and headed back into the kitchen, staring hard at the recipe he carried with him. The calls with Lorelai had become part of his daily routine, like exercise or showering. The couple of days he hadn't reached out to her before bed, or vice versa, were spent staring at the ceiling with a growing awareness that it had been six years since he'd been in a relationship. Six years since he lost himself in a woman's touch. He had a very good reason for being alone, but those encounters with Lorelai Gilmore seemed to scuttle his common sense.

There was every reason not to pursue Lorelai, reasons other than his own hangups after the disaster with Anna. She was a single mom in his hometown. A hometown he did his very best to avoid and was only there now because he owed it to his dad to see that the last of his affairs were settled. She was working for him, and that financial tie to her made him uncomfortable to think of her as anything other than a friend.

Too bad his subconscious didn't seem to agree.

There was something about Lorelai that made her easy to talk with. Masks, he thought again as he opened a drawer and dug out a pencil. Absently, he notated part of the recipe. Her mask seemed to slip around him, probably because he knew what a struggle financing Chilton had been for her. He had slipped through a crack in hers, and he had a feeling she was perilously close to seeing beneath his.

Luke closed his eyes. Maybe it was time to find someone to date again. Someone not named Lorelai Gilmore.

But the thought, like every other time he considered it over the past few years, left him cold.

He opened his eyes and saw Liz still at the table, chin propped on her hand as she stared thoughtfully at him. Her eyes, twins of his own, were serious, thoughtful, and just a touch worried.

And he remembered the day she had appeared on his doorstep six years earlier, a tiny Jess in tow, as she loudly announced she was going to teach Anna Nardini a thing or two. It had been hours after the whole fucking ordeal had landed on the front page of every tabloid in the country. Liz had been drunk when she made her proclamation, but hadn't touched alcohol in the years since.

If anything good had come out of the entire fiasco, that had been it.

Liz sobered, Jess started to come out of his shell, and Luke had focused his energy on them. He bought the duplex so they could have their own space but still live together. It was an arrangement that worked. Liz still annoyed the hell out of him half the time, she was his sister after all, but they were together. She and Jess were the only things he could really count on in his life. That and his career. That kept him constant. That kept him sane over all of the blows his life had dealt him. He couldn't allow anyone or anything to mess that up.

That included any sort of infatuation with Lorelai Gilmore.


	6. Chapter 5

The next day, Lorelai stood in the middle of the empty hardware store, hands on her hips as she surveyed her domain.

Tom had done quick work with the front room. He removed all of the shelving but left the counter alone. Lorelai, Rory, and Lane had finished the rest. Mrs. Kim allowed Lane to help, saying that the work was good for her. The three spent two days scrubbing the floors and windows and cleaning the counter. Lorelai decided to leave painting to whoever the tenant was.

She brought in a card table, setting it in the middle of the now-vacant floor. She arranged two chairs on either side of the table, then set out neat stacks of the completed applications, a legal pad for her own notes, and a pencil cup filled with newly sharpened no. 2s. There was no way she needed that many pencils, but Rory begged. Some kid she had. If she wanted to spend her summer sharpening pencils, so be it.

She vetoed using the interviews as an excuse to go on an office supply shopping spree.

Lorelai tucked a curl behind her ear and smoothed out the flowered skirt she wore after checking the time. She loved this skirt and the green wrap top that went with it. Her stomach fluttered with nerves, and she firmly told herself that this was no different than hiring employees for the inn. Mia had turned that task over to her years ago, and finding a tenant for the building shouldn't be any different than hiring a new maid or waiter.

Behind the counter, Rory and Lane perched on stools, their own legal pads and pencils ready. It took three days of wearing Lorelai down before she gave into the girls begging to be present for the interviews. It was actually a decent tactic. Applicants would be more hesitant to try any funny stuff if there were two teenagers in the room.

Their heads collectively swiveled as they heard the back door open. Lorelai's heart leaped into her throat a split second before the siren's scent of apple pie wafted through the room. Then she absolutely _knew_ who it was.

Luke walked in from the back carrying a covered dish in his hands and a cloth grocery bag over one arm. He frowned at them as Rory and Lane scrambled off their stools, clustering around him to get a peek at the suspiciously apple pie-smelling dish.

"Is that pie?" Rory asked eagerly.

Lane sniffed at the dish. "It's real. It's real pie. Made of apples. Not tofu. _Apples_."

Confused, Luke set the pie and the bag on the counter. He frowned at Lane. "Tofu apple pie?"

Lane shrugged. "It's my mom," she said as if it explained everything. "If you can't make it out of soy, then it's no good."

"She's deprived," Rory told Luke, linking arms with Lane in a show of solidarity. "She requires large quantities of sweets to make it through puberty."

"And pizza," Lane added. "Oh, and don't forget the fries."

"Fries are very important," Rory agreed.

"You're too young to consume that much junk food," Luke told them.

Lane sighed dramatically. "No one understands."

Luke did a slow survey of the front of the hardware store. "What's all this?"

"Interview day!" Lorelai announced with a sweep of her hand. God, he looked good. _Really_ good. He had ditched the sunglasses and wore a similar outfit to the one he'd worn to the house weeks earlier: Short-sleeved flannel, T-shirt, backwards baseball cap. She didn't care that she'd seen him on TV close to every night. Nothing was better than seeing him in the flesh, and joy danced in her stomach along with the nerves. "The first applicant gets here in 15 minutes."

The idea came fully formed into her brain, and she was across the room in two steps. Grabbing Luke's arm, she propelled him toward the table. "And you're just in time to help!" He _would_ had known about the interviews had he bothered to call, and the two days of silence hadn't been lost on Lorelai.

Panic leaped into his eyes, and he jerked his arm away. "Oh, no. I just came by to see how things were going. I'm not sitting in on any interviews."

"It's perfect," Lorelai hedged, trying to tug Luke once more. It was the equivalent of trying to move a boulder or getting Michel to do something. Actually, moving the boulder was easier. "You can help me vet the applicants. It'll save a lot of time, since you were going to have to approve the final tenant anyhow."

"I trust you."

She rolled her eyes at him, then pointed to one of the empty chairs at the table. "Sit."

Most of her expected him to do an about-face and leave the hardware store the way he came in. Part of her was terrified he would take the pie with him. Instead, Luke sat. Not just sat, but sprawled in the chair. He folded his arms over his chest and arched an eyebrow at her. Everything about him said "your move."

Behind Lorelai, Rory and Lane snickered. Great, so she had no allies. Primly, she took the seat next to him and folded her hands on the table. "There, see? That's not so bad."

If Luke arched that eyebrow any higher, there would probably be ceiling damage.

Before she could consider her next move, her gaze fell on the cloth grocery bag he'd brought in with him. The top of a thermos peeked out of the bag. Her gaze flicked between Luke and the bag. He smirked. They both knew what was in it.

"Rory, honey," Lorelai said in her sweetest voice, "would you bring Mommy the thermos that's in the bag?"

"Nope," Rory replied and helped herself to it and one of the cups tucked into the bag along with the thermos.

Lorelai whipped her head around, gaping at her daughter. "Traitor!"

Rory poured out the coffee and saluted her mother with it.

"You choose coffee over Mommy?"

"Every time," Rory replied.

Lorelai sank down in her chair and groaned, pressing her hand to her face. "At least I can't say I didn't raise her right."

"Go get the coffee, Lorelai."

She peeked at Luke through splayed fingers. "Uh uh. What's to say the moment I don't get up that you don't suddenly take off for Timbuktu?"

"First of all, I lack an airplane."

"Smart ass," she muttered.

"Second, I'm not leaving until you've had that pie."

So it _was_ pie. Gorgeous, seductive pie that was turning her senses upside down and crazy. Or maybe it was the man who had brought said pie. She decided it was a little bit of column A and a lot of column B. "Then we're having that pie after the interviews."

"Oh really?" Luke asked as Rory and Lane loudly protested. Lorelai pushed up from the chair and headed to the counter.

"Yes. I have self control." Lorelai lied as she took the thermos from Rory and poured herself a cup of coffee. She clutched it in both hands and just inhaled.

"It has a streusel topping."

Lorelai twitched.

"Baked it in a springform pan," Luke told Rory and Lane, ignoring Lorelai. "That's one seriously deep pie."

Lane whined. Just a bit.

"It just came out of the oven right before I drove her. I bet it's still warm, even after two hours."

"Mom," Rory pleaded. Lorelai ignored her and sat back at the table with her coffee.

Luke got up and moved to the dish, removing the cover to reveal the springform pan. He unlatched and removed the sides of the pan, then dipped into the bag for a knife, a small paper plate, and a plastic fork. Carefully, he cut off a sliver of the pie, transferred it to the plate, and brought it back to the table for her inspection.

"I'm not eating that," Lorelai informed him.

"I will," Lane said eagerly, Rory nodding next to her.

Luke leaned in, breath ticking Lorelai's ear, and she shuddered. "Yes, you will."

She turned her head and suddenly their faces were just inches apart. Her eyes fell to his lips, and more than the pie, more than the coffee, she wondered what _he_ would taste like. For all her bravado, her self control was actually a big fat lie. She suddenly didn't care that it was the middle of the morning or that her daughter and her best friend were watching. All she wanted to do was draw him into her and sink her teeth into his lower lip before kissing him into a new plane of existence.

He pulled back before she could follow through with the impulse, cutting off part of apple pie with the fork and holding it up to her lips. Self preservation made her take a bite.

Warm apples, cinnamon, sugar, and other spices burst on her tongue. She closed her eyes and moaned, savoring the rich taste of the dessert. When she came back to herself, she found his eyes on her, huge and dark. Huge, dark, and _aroused_. A small thrill shot through her. She suddenly remembered that the first time he had brought her coffee, she had reacted the same way.

She was seconds from ordering the girls out of the room so she could go all Showtime on him when the front door opened, shocking them out of their trances.

Lorelai glanced at the counter, wondering what if the girls had noticed. What she saw didn't surprise her one bit. Luke's cutting into the apple pie had been a signal for the two of them to dig in, and they already had big slices on their own plates and were ignoring the adults in favor of their own gluttony.

Traitors, Lorelai thought, and turned her attention to the door.

Kirk stood in the doorway, clad from head to foot in funereal black. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he gave the small group his most solemn look. "Am I interrupting?"

Startled, Lorelai rose from her seat to greet Kirk, wondering if his mother had died. "No, no, we were … having breakfast."

"Pie isn't breakfast," Luke said _sotto voce_.

"It is in my house," she whispered back before turning her full attention to Kirk. Besides, it was Luke's fault for bringing the pie in the first place.

Kirk remained in the doorway, and Lorelai smiled at him. "It's OK to come in, Kirk. You were the first appointment today."

"Thank you." Still solemn, he crossed the room and reached into his jacket and pulling out several business cards. He bowed formally before Lorelai before handing her one, then did the same with Luke, Rory, and Lane. Confused, Lorelai looked down at the card in her hand.

"Undertaker?" She winged an eyebrow at Kirk. "But your application said you wanted to run a porcelain unicorn store."

A pained look crossed Kirk's face. "Yes. Well. Taylor has approved the license for the town's 13th porcelain unicorn store, and I realized there was no way I could compete."

"Good God," Luke muttered.

"Huh. We were just at 10 two months ago," Lorelai said.

"There has been a boom," Kirk said.

"Of ugly porcelain unicorns?" Luke asked, disdain dripping from every word. Lorelai frowned at him. There really was no reason to be rude about it, though 13 stores was a bit much. OK, 10 were far too many as is, but it was Stars Hollow. The town was single-handedly keeping the porcelain industry afloat.

Kirk gasped at Luke, then pulled a small figurine of a unicorn out of his pocket. "He didn't mean it, Pierre," he said to it and sighed. "He was going to be my mascot."

"So, you're drowning your sorrows by becoming an undertaker?" Lane asked as Rory scribbled notes on her clipboard.

Kirk brightened. "Yes! I figured the town could use historically accurate coffins. And I even found someone who could do coffins with porcelain unicorn inlays"

Lorelai could already see Taylor's face turning at least six shades of purple at being neighbors with an undertaker. As much as the prospect of pissing Taylor off would appealed to her, Kirk wouldn't be the one fielding his calls at all hours of the day. Gently, she grasped Kirk's arm and steered him toward the door. "Kirk, hon, I know you're upset about the unicorn store, but the answer isn't to become an undertaker. I mean, you'd have to handle a lot of dead people."

"Oh, I volunteer with the ambulance service at least three days a week."

"I know. You oh-so-helped me when I broke my leg doing yoga." And caused her to have to keep the cast an extra two weeks because Kirk had made her leg injury worse in the process. "But there needs to be special permissions, licenses and such. I'm not sure that we could do embalming in the middle of the town square. Am I right?" Lorelai looked over her shoulder for confirmation. Lane and Rory solemnly nodded in agreement.

Luke just gave them an "you've gotta be kidding me" look. "They still hold that re-enactment every year, don't they? There's your dead people right there."

Annoyed, Lorelai turned her back on him.

"Why don't you go to Weston's and get a big slice of cake," she suggested, rubbing Kirk's arm. "And give it another try? You can come back later if you think of something else."

With Kirk safely out the door, she stomped back to the table, fighting her temper. She couldn't lay into Luke in front of Rory and Lane, but the term "attitude adjustment" came to mind. Eyes on him, she announced to the room at large, "OK, everyone. With the next candidate, we are going to smile and _be polite_. This isn't _Welcome Back, Kotter_."

"Mom's talking about you," Rory said to Luke.

"I know." And that smile of his quickly flashed and made Lorelai's heart jump. Bad girl, she told herself.

The door opened once more to reveal Miss Patty. "Hello, dears!" she called out, then drew up short at seeing Luke. Her eyes lit up with an unholy gleam. "Well, look who's graced us with a visit!"

"Hi, Miss Patty," Luke replied, his voice almost wooden. Lorelai still stood at his shoulder, and she felt him stiffen. She nearly laid a hand on his shoulder in comfort, then jerked it back before she could follow through.

"Well, I must say, you are looking much better than you seem on TV these days. You seem so tired. I wasn't able to get a good look at you during the town meeting, but you at least lost the sunglasses." She took a seat at the table, beaming at the younger girls. "Rory, Lane. When are you two starting up your dance lessons again?"

Rory sank down on her stool while Lane said, "My mom says dancing is the work of the devil."

"And this is how _Footloose_ came into existence," Lorelai replied.

"I prefer _Dirty Dancing_ ," Patty said, winking at Luke. He promptly flushed, and Lorelai smirked. Bull's eye. She took the chair opposite of Miss Patty and shot Luke a "sit and behave" look. To her surprise, he did just that.

"Have you seen one of his games in person yet?" Miss Patty asked Lorelai.

"Um. No." Lorelai tried to picture herself actually sitting in a baseball stadium. It was easier when she was home, because she could distract herself when a certain former Stars Hollow resident wasn't on the screen. But an actual game? Yikes.

"You should." Miss Patty's smile looked as if it held all the secrets of the feminine world. "Those tight baseball pants in person. Thank about it."

Luke just sank lower in his seat. Lorelai stared at her notepad, not bothering to hide her grin.

After Patty's application for expanding the dance studio came Andrew seeking a bigger space for the bookstore. This one got Rory's enthusiastic approval, and she begged Lorelai to approve the application almost the moment he walked in the door.

"Your building's bigger than this one," Luke pointed out, the first helpful comment he had made the entire day.

"Yes," Andrew admitted, "but I've outgrown it so I want to move the day-to-day operations here and keep the other store as the movie theater and book storage."

"You're drooling," Lane told Rory, who promptly covered her mouth.

Rory held up her notepad after Andrew left. It read 10/10, would approve.

Lorelai laughed and marveled at the child she had created.

* * *

He was being an ass, and they all knew it.

It was his own fault for not bothering to call Lorelai. Luke had spent the first two days of his off week screwing up that pie recipe he'd torn from the magazine on the plane again and again. Liz and Jess had devoured the failed attempts like sugar was going out of style. Insomnia dogged him to the point where he stayed up the entire night painstakingly going over every step of the recipe again until it was perfect. He wasn't a cooking god. He just knew how to follow a recipe and was stubborn enough to keep trying until he got it right.

Luke told himself that it was for the best, that he couldn't keep calling Lorelai every single day. She had called him though. He lay in bed and listen to the sound of her voice float up the stairs. He couldn't hear the words, but just the tone was enough to make him feel guilty. What could he say? He was growing addicted to her, ergo he needed going cold turkey.

By baking her a damn apple pie and practically drooling all over her as she sampled it. Good job, stupid.

He kicked himself in the ass repeatedly over that and for the fact that had he just manned up and checked in with Lorelai, or even pressed play on his answering machine, he wouldn't be in Stars Hollow helping Lorelai filter through the peanut gallery of applicants vying for a chance to rent the hardware store. Lorelai was right in that having him here meant she didn't have to go through the process of vetting the interviews with him. Not that Luke was that interested in it. He trusted Lorelai to choose someone that wouldn't destroy his dad's building. Now every other word out of his mouth seemed to be coming out moron as memory after memory came back to him of the years before he left came back to him.

Miss Patty had been the hardest so far. She was well known for her sexual entendres and had been making pointed remarks about Luke's ass since he reached the age of consent. But she had been one of the ones who stood by his father through his entire illness, and he braced himself for the remarks he knew would come. Why hadn't he come home more often? Did he know how sad and lonely his dad was after Liz left? How had he not noticed his dad getting weaker day after day? Everyone in the town had to be judging him for his actions when his dad was dying.

Luke wished the censure would just rear its head. He was used to that.

But Miss Patty didn't allude to any of that. She made a few pointed remarks about his body, reached over and patted his arm, and chatted easily with the girls before departing.

After Andrew's interview, and Rory's pleading with Lorelai just to cut the rest of the day short, the next few people Luke didn't recognize at all. But they knew who he was. The three applicants, two women and a man, all stared at him like he was a demigod. He wanted to sink beneath the table, but shoved his asshole tendencies into the closet. It took a moment to don the public persona, the one he loathed with every breath. It wasn't exactly all smiles, kisses, and rainbows. But his expression was more neutral, and he was polite and respectful. His mother would be proud, he absently thought as he shook hands and signed autographs.

When the third applicant had departed, Lorelai folded her hands on the table and frowned at him.

"What?" Luke asked her, the sentence coming out more curtly than he wanted.

"Nothing," she replied as she picked up the applications and started to shuffle through them.

"If you have something to say, say it," he snapped.

Now she smiled. "There you are." Satisfied, she laid the next application on top.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I like you better surly." Lorelai's attention moved to the teenagers, who were off in their own world and chatting with each other. Probably discussing Rory's bookstore empire. "You know, all young Lou Grant."

"I thought you didn't want me to be an ass."

"It's better than the Ken doll thing you've got going on right now."

"What the hell does _that_ mean?"

Lorelai rolled her eyes and stole the thermos from a protesting Rory so she could help herself to the last of the coffee. She had just sat back at the table again when the door opened and Taylor came in.

Lorelai nearly spilled her coffee, and Luke leaped from his seat. "Get out!" he barked.

"I will not," Taylor informed him with none of the reverent tones that the last few applicants had used. "I have an application submitted and an appointment. My business is with Lorelai."

"Who I hired, so your business is with me."

"You didn't submit an application, Taylor!" Lorelai protested.

"It's right there on top." Taylor nodded to the neatly typewritten application sitting on top of the stack.

Luke snatched the paper before Lorelai could and read through it. "This is for a Boris Whipplin."

"That's me," Taylor said stiffly. "Whipplin is my mother's maiden name."

"And the Boris?"

"I'll have you know that Boris is a perfectly acceptable middle name."

No one said a word. They didn't even breathe. Laughter bubbled up in Luke's chest, replacing the fury, and after a few seconds, he risked side-eying a look at Lorelai. She was biting her bottom lip. Hard. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and felt it was reasonably safe to talk. With a curt gesture, he waved at the chair. "Fine. Sit, _Boris."_

Luke heard a small giggle behind him. Rory. He very nearly lost it.

"Thank you," Taylor said stiffly, taking the chair.

Luke remained standing, preferring to stare down at Taylor. "I oughta kick your ass back into the street. You tried to steal my dad's building away from me."

Taylor rolled his eyes. "You weren't doing anything with it! It was sitting here, an eyesore on the village square. It was attracting vagrants and vandalism!"

"And varmints," Lorelai said under her breath.

"The building is _not_ an eyesore," Luke protested. "I kept up the maintenance on it, kept the blinds up so it would look occupied."

Taylor scoffed. "It doesn't change the fact that it's been nearly 10 years. Something must be done with this place."

Luke dropped back in his seat. "Fine. And what would _you_ do with it?"

Taylor sat back and folded his hands in his lap. "Open an ice cream parlor."

Lorelai's eyes lit up as Rory and Lane made sounds of approval.

"No," Luke snapped.

"But Luke! Ice cream!" Lorelai protested.

"No," Luke replied, giving Taylor a look that he knew sent some of the rookies in search for clean underwear. But Taylor wasn't fazed. "Absolutely not. Because there is no way in hell I am ever renting this property to you, got it? Get out."

Taylor stiffened. "But I have a full presentation to give. To _Lorelai_. Who is an active member of the community. Not someone who just left his terminally ill father and his town behind to go preen in front of the cameras."

His heart gave two hard knocks. Guilt leaped into his throat, choking off his air. Luke braced the table, leaning over it so he was nearly nose to nose with Taylor. "Get the hell out. _Now_."

"I don't want to lease from you anyhow." Taylor shoved the chair back and stormed to the door. He turned back. "If this place isn't leased within 30 days, I will be speaking with my lawyer."

Luke closed his eyes and tried to grasp what remained of his temper after the door slammed shut. "How many more of these?"

"Just one," Lorelai said quietly and gestured to a woman who waited just outside.

The woman was somewhere around Lorelai's age and clearly nervous to be going through the leasing process. Luke tuned out the discussion, staring at the spot on the wall where shelving had once hung. There were small cubbies, each filled with some sort of gardening tool. The end cubbies had held colored rolls of paper towels, because they were closest to the door and his dad had argued that the first thing people wanted if they weren't building something was to clean up their messes.

As Taylor indicated, Luke had left one hell of a mess behind for everyone else to clean up.

"So, do you have any questions?" Lorelai was asking the woman.

"Um. Yes. I'm sorry, I'm just curious." The woman shifted her attention to Luke. She wrung her hands, picking at her nails. "The whole thing with Anna Nardini. Was it true?"

He was on his feet before he realized he was moving, throughly fed up with everything - the interviews, the reminders of his past being hurled in his face, the edgy arousal he couldn't seem to shake. "This is over."

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"You don't have the right to ask me stuff about that. Ask me about the building, about the construction, about anything else in this goddamn place. But you have no right to ask me about my personal life." Luke yanked the application off the stack, tore it half, then stormed out of the room.

* * *

 **Author's note:** Today's featured recipe is "Deep Dish Apple Pie with Streusel Topping" from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. If you search for it on the Love, Laurie blog, you will see pictures and everything. I haven't made it, but it looks like a pie that Lorelai, Rory, and Lane would all drool over.


	7. Chapter 6

**Warning:** This chapter is where the fic starts to live up to its M rating, so it's NSFW.

* * *

 _Chapter 6_

Questions swirled through Lorelai's brain as she ushered the final applicant out the door, then sent Lane home. Rory tagged along with her, the girls whispering under their breaths. She wondered if they were talking about Luke's behavior, and the knot in her gut loosened when she realized that they were just further plotting Rory's bookstore empire.

It surprised Lorelai that Rory had such an interest in journalism when her passion clearly lay in books. Part of her wished that maybe Rory would want to become a librarian, or an editor at a major publishing house. Still, she wanted to be the next Christiane Amanpour and Lorelai was determined to support that dream in any way possible. This included getting Rory through Chilton.

She locked the door behind Rory and Lane and drew the blinds. The remains of the pie and the empty thermos sat on the counter, so she packaged them up and started on the walk home. It gave her the chance to mull over Luke's strange behavior.

Lorelai knew who Anna Nardini was. She had a few of her romantic comedies in her VHS collection, purchased used at one of the library sales. She was an actress roughly her own age that had made a big splash on a medical drama in the 80s, then went into movies after the series concluded in the early 90s. But more than that, she was beautiful and constantly on the arm of some hunky Hollywood star. The most recent issues of _People_ had her being escorted by George Clooney. Anna was single but had a kid, and what pictures emerged of the girl were pretty cute as well.

So something had happened between Luke and Anna Nardini, and Lorelai sighed as she trudged around to the back door of her house. Of course hot baseball card guy would cross paths with gorgeous actress. Still. Something bad had happened. Bad enough to cause Luke, who had confronted Taylor and still stuck around, to run off. None of my business, she firmly told herself, and wondered if he had rabbited for good. It's wasn't like he couldn't afford another thermos.

Lorelai dumped the thermos in the sink to wash later, then took the remaining pie into the living room and dug straight in. God, if sex could be consumed, this pie was what it would taste like. She licked the fork and thought about keeping some for Rory. Then, remembering her child's betrayal, she dismissed that thought. Rory and Lane had devoured two-thirds of the pie on their own. The rest was hers.

Her back door opened, and Lorelai prepared to taunt Rory with her pie hoarding. Instead, Babette's voice came from the kitchen. "Hey, sugah, you around?"

"Yeah." Lorelai set the pie aside, giving it a longing look. At least Babette wouldn't make off with it. She headed into the kitchen to greet her neighbor, who probably had been on the phone with Miss Patty for the better part of the afternoon.

"I just wanted to make sure everything's OK," Babette said, patting Lorelai's arm. "Patty told me about her interview, then said she saw Luke storming outta there about an hour or so later. Taylor's fuming too."

"Yeah, everything's fine." Lorelai started hunting through the cabinets for coffee, not surprised to see she was out. Great, that meant a trip to Doose's, and the last thing she wanted was to talk with Taylor. Maybe she could drive out to the inn and sneak some from Sookie. She was that desperate. The grocery bag Luke had brought with him caught her eye, and she wasn't sure what prompted her to reach for it. She peeked inside, and her heart jumped when she saw the bag of ground coffee nestled at the bottom next to the unused cups. She pulled it out, tugged it open, and just inhaled.

Babette watched, a knowing smile tugging at her lips. "Smells good, doesn't it?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Lorelai moaned and filled her coffeemaker.

Curiosity tugged at her, and she considered Babette as she located two clean mugs. Mojo Jojo and Garfield. They would have to do. Back to Babette. She wasn't quite the gossip queen that Miss Patty and Eastside Tilly were, but she was close. Damn close. Close enough to answer her questions. "What do you know about Luke and Anna Nardini?"

"Oh, sugah. You didn't know?"

"Why do you assume I would?"

"Because it was everywhere six years ago."

Lorelai thought back to 1993. Rory had been eight that summer, and Lorelai had been taking on as much extra work as she could to save for the house. She hadn't been that involved in the community - that had come after moving into the Crap Shack. Between work and Rory, there hadn't been much time for anything else. Sure, they had watched plenty of TV through the wonky antenna that brought three channels into the potting shed. But _Entertainment Tonight_ had clashed with reruns of _Designing Women_ , and the girls always chose the Sugarbakers over anything else.

Babette settled herself at the table as Lorelai handed her the Garfield mug. "They dated for awhile, and then she got pregnant."

Lorelai nearly dropped Mojo Jojo on the floor. Her hands not quite steady, she managed to fill her own mug and sat across from Babette. Her stomach twisted as she remembered seeing pictures of the dark-haired little girl in _People_. "Anna Nardini's daughter is Luke's?"

Babette shook her head. "Nope. Kid's got a different father. But Anna made Luke think she was his. It went through the courts and everything. The tabloids were all over the place, trying to dig up stuff on Luke's past. It was real bad, sugah. It really twisted Luke up. His sister, Liz, is still friends with Carrie Duncan, and she was telling Carrie about how he refuses to even date because of it."

Lorelai thought of the look on Luke's face as he'd torn up the women's application, of how he had looked at _her_ at several points since the night they met and had seemed almost terrified.

"You really should ask him about it." Babette finished her coffee and got to her feet. "I've gotta get home to Morey. Cinnamon's not doing so well, the poor thing, and we're taking him to get checked out. Vet thinks he may have a year, if that, left. I just can't handle losing Cinnamon yet."

After Babette had gone, Lorelai sat at the table for a long time, staring at the bag of coffee sitting on the counter.

And she suddenly found herself loathing Anna Nardini.

* * *

Luke pulled to a stop outside the gates that led to the cemetery and laid his head on the wheel. Fuck Stars Hollow and its nosy busybodies. Fuck his life. He was furious at himself, at Lorelai for roping him into sticking around for those stupid interviews, at everyone who just couldn't leave well enough alone. About the only people in this damn town he wasn't mad at were Rory and Lane, and way to go. Just be a complete and utter ass in front of two teenage girls. Hell of a way to be an example to them.

He stared at the cemetery, at the gravestones that lay beyond the wrought-iron gates. Guilt sat heavy in his chest, and it only magnified when he pulled away from the curb and turned back toward town without bothering to get out of his truck. Every instinct screamed to head for the interstate and not stop until he was back in Boston, but he made himself turn down the street where his childhood home sat, a FOR SALE sign out front.

The house was in remarkably good shape, and he walked through the rooms waiting for the memories to overcome him. But there was nothing. The 1960s-era paneling had been stripped and replaced with sheet rock, painted that cream color all empty houses on the buyer's market seemed to have. The carpet had been replaced, and he was relieved. Shag had its place. Not in 1999. The appliances had been updated as well, and the home little-resembled the place where he had grown up. Lorelai had done an excellent job overseeing the renovations, and guilt twisted once more.

Luke got back in the truck, knowing what he had to do. He made his way toward the Gilmore house, relieved to see the Jeep sitting in front. He reached for his sunglasses, then sighed. No point in them any longer. He left them on the dash and headed to the front door.

Rory answered, her blue eyes large and worried as she gave him the once-over. "Hey! Are you OK?"

"Yeah." He shuffled from foot to foot a bit nervously. "Sorry about earlier."

Rory frantically shook her head. "No, no, Mom said that last applicant was inappropriate, and Lane and I agreed. That's why we marked her completely off the short list." She stared at him for a long moment, then moved in for a quick hug. It was awkward and over before he fully processed what had happened. She blushed. "I thought you needed it."

His chest felt odd. Warm. And Luke found his first smile since storming out of the hardware store. "I did. Thanks, Rory."

His gaze flicked to the stairs where Lorelai, still dressed in that green wrap top and flowery skirt, held a cardboard box in her arms.. The smile on her face told him that she'd seen the entire thing. That feeling in his chest only grew. He took several deep breaths, looking at both girls. "I just wanted to explain …"

"You don't need to tell us," Lorelai cut in, but he ignored her.

"Anna Nardini was my ex-girlfriend," Luke told Rory. "It was a long time ago, but it ended badly."

"I figured," Rory said. She straightened her shoulders. "Mom, can we do a ceremonial bonfire?"

"I've already gathered the tapes." Lorelai finished her descent down the stairs, and he could see VHS tapes peeking out of the box. "New Gilmore household rule. No movies with Anna Nardini in them will ever cross this threshold."

"Absolutely none," Rory agreed.

"You don't have to do that."

"Yes, we do," Lorelai informed him and turned to Rory. "Bonfire, kid?"

"I'll get the matches."

"No, don't," Luke insisted. When they stared at him, he sighed. "It's bad for the environment. At least donate them to a library or something. Geez."

"Shall we?" Lorelai asked Rory.

"It has to be a library we hate," Rory replied.

"Oh, how about the one in Litchfield?"

"Perfect!" Rory took the box from Lorelai and headed outside. "I'm going to the library," she called over her shoulder. "I'll put these in the back of the Jeep."

As soon as Rory was safely out of earshot, Luke turned to Lorelai. She had her hands on her hips and a thoughtful expression. "Why did you do that?"

She stared at him for all of five seconds before rolling her eyes, as if he had missed something blatantly obvious. "She hurt you."

That lovely knot of guilt twisted in his gut again, along with something else he was hesitant to name. "You know then."

"I don't know a lot about it," she admitted. "Babette, my neighbor, gave me the very basics this afternoon."

Luke gaped at her. "How could you not know? It was plastered on every tabloid from the Atlantic to the Pacific! Hell, I even think half the planet."

"I've never seen you in any tabloid in Stars Hollow." Lorelai looked like she was about to say more, then held her tongue.

"Then why-"

"Because normal people don't go storming out in front of half the town the way you did," Lorelai snapped. She twisted a lock of hair around one finger before giving an annoyed huff. "She hurt you pretty badly. You don't have to talk about it. I just want you to know we're on your side. Me and Rory."

"You don't even know everything that happened."

"I don't need to know. I just know you."

The guilt was shoved away, replaced once more by the warm feeling in his chest. Luke scoffed. "We've barely known each other a month, Lorelai."

"I know."

But the way Lorelai looked at him, straight into him, made him believe - truly believe - that she saw him. The real him. Luke wondered if she could see everything about him. It took everything in him not to reach for her, to pull her into his arms and see what she tasted like. He wanted that more than he wanted his next breath.

Luke wasn't surprised when she made the first move. This was the woman who filled his answering machine with so much chatter that she put radio announcers to shame. Of course she'd be the one to make the first move.

Lorelai stepped to him, her eyes searching his. They weren't touching, but they were so close that he could feel the heat radiating from her body. She ran a hand down his arm, and he shivered beneath her touch. Then her arms were around him, her head laying against his chest, and Luke was positive his heart was about to give out. Stunned, he stared down at the top of her head. "What …?"

"It's called hugging," Lorelai said against his shirt. "Rory's right. You needed one."

Oh. _Oh_. Luke swallowed hard, then remembered how arms functioned. He gingerly wrapped them around her, holding her close. There was nothing sexual about the gesture, but every place her body made contact with his burned. He dropped his chin to the top of her head and tried his best to relax into the embrace. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been hugged other than his sister's wild impromptu ones. But even then, those didn't come that often. His family had never been that demonstrative.

He thought he could stay like this forever.

The phone rang, and Lorelai pulled away. Giving him an apologetic smile, she picked up the portable, and Luke managed to get his unruly body under control. Because had that hug gone on any longer, he doubt he could have controlled the response certain parts of his body were making. As she talked to whoever it was on the other end of the line, he slipped out the front door.

Luke lingered, counting off the seconds as his heart pounded. There was the truck, parked on the street in front of the house. He needed to walk to it, get behind the wheel, and drive away. But his hand remained on the doorknob, his feet planted on the porch like magnets were holding him in place. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. Only he could hold a woman like her in his arms and not do anything about it.

Go home, the rational part of his brain told himself.

Instead, he twisted the knob and went back inside.

Lorelai's back was to the door, her spine rigid as she talked to whoever it was on the other end of the line. "I'm not under any obligation to tell you where I got the money for Chilton," she said. "Rory was accepted, I found the money, she starts the day after Labor Day. That's all you need to know. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my degenerate life of passing Pink Floyd shirts and weed out to all the hookers on the street." She jabbed the off button as if it was her mortal enemy and dropped the phone back on the charger with a short, frustrated scream.

"Family?" Luke guessed.

"Mother." She spat the word out as if it was a curse, and he remembered that Lorelai didn't have a good relationship with her parents. It had been part of Mia's information dump she'd given him. "Cruella de Vil's upset that I foiled her latest plot."

"Oh?"

Lorelai hugged herself and huffed. "Rory going to Chilton. The headmaster's wife and my mother are best friends, and don't think I wasn't aware of that. Rory's acceptance and financial aid were manipulated in such a way that I would be forced to go to my parents for help."

Luke remembered what she had told him about Chilton. "You deviated."

She grinned. "Like a pro."

But he could still see it in her eyes. Whatever her mother said had cut deep, and it broke something open that had been sealed away. A surge of protectiveness went through him, something Luke had only felt a few times in his life. For his parents. For Liz and Jess. For a baby girl stuck in the middle of a terrible legal battle only because she existed. And now for Lorelai. Rory too, because they were a package deal.

Despite whatever had been thrown at her, Lorelai still stood - strong and defiant with a quip on her tongue, ready to take on the world. That magnet holding his feet in place moved, drawing him toward her. Luke thought to return the hug she had given him, but her gaze fell on his lips and he found himself finally, _finally_ following through on his not-so chase thoughts.

The kiss was hesitant at first, and he nearly pulled away out of panic. Then she let out a little moan and pressed closer to him, catching his lower lip between her teeth as her hands made their way into his hair. His hands spanned her waist as he teased her mouth open and took the kiss deeper.

It had been years since he felt like this. No, he didn't think he'd ever felt this crazy combination of breathlessness and raw power all at once. Not even when he'd been in his teens and was trying to cope with all those damn hormones, and Rachel had been more than willing to help out in that area. This kiss was intimate, erotic, and hot as hell.

His hands slid around her waist to the knot keeping her top together, making quick work of it as her hands dove under his flannel to tug at his T-shirt. Her back hit a hard surface and oh, look, a handy wall. He could work with that. He nudged his hips against her, letting her feel exactly what she did to his body. Every night. Every single night she had left him in this state, no matter if he was at home or in some far-flung hotel. It was thoughts of her and only his hand for comfort, but not anymore.

He hissed as she worked her hand between them to touch him through his jeans, dropping his head to the sweet juncture where shoulder met neck. He breathed in sweat and _her_ and just had to kiss her there. She jumped in shock, then laughed as he pulled back. He smiled, and her eyes darkened as she pulled him back to her for another kiss.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they were going fast. Way too fast. Her top now open, his hands slid beneath her skirt to trace the edges of her panties before sliding up to bunch her skirt around her waist so he could boost her up against the wall. His hands brushed over her stomach, and he felt the slight ridges beneath his fingertips. Stretch marks, from where she had given birth to Rory.

Like the ones he'd caressed when he thought Anna had been pregnant with his child.

He jerked away, breaking the kiss so fast that he nearly stumbled backwards, unable to stop the memory from flooding his brain. The lies Anna had whispered to him echoed through his head. He blinked. Hard. It took precious seconds for the darkened bedroom in Los Angeles to be replaced by a sunny foyer in Connecticut.

Lorelai sagged against the wall, just gaping at him. Her skirt fell back into place, fluttering around her knees. "Oh. Wow. I mean, I was wondering what it would be like, and I hope you don't mind the lip thing, but I just had to know, and …"

"I shouldn't had done that." His voice was rough. Harsh. Loud. Luke didn't mean for it to come out the way it had, but he knew it was the only way to do this. He couldn't let her see that this had been one of the most earth-shattering moments of his life.

He saw the heat in her eyes flash to shock. Then hurt. "Excuse me?"

"You. Me. This. It's _not_ happening." Luke pushed a hand through his hair and realized at some point his cap had come off. He turned, partially to look for it and also to give Lorelai a chance to fix her clothes. "I'm going home."

"You're running away," she accused.

His cap had landed near the door, and he bent over to pick it up, unable to look at her. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are." Lorelai's voice was breathy but furious. "You ran away from the town meeting, and you ran away from the interviews earlier. Now you're running from _me_."

Luke whipped around. She had not bothered to close her top, and the view from neck to the waist of her skirt was breathtaking. It took everything in him not to walk back and coax one of her breasts out of the cups of her bra so he could properly worship it. Instead, he focused on her face. Her shoulders were thrown back, her expression angry and defiant.

"We're not doing this. I hired you to do a job for me." He saw the moment she remembered, and she hadn't been the only one to forget. "Yeah, forgot didn't you? Well, so did I. I'm not forgetting again." His hands shook as he fumbled with the door knob, as he escaped into the heat of the July afternoon.

He was halfway back to Boston before he remembered that he left the grocery bag, thermos, and pie dishes behind. He suspected he left whatever remained of his heart there as well.


	8. Chapter 7

_And the most puzzling thing about the Red Sox's bullpen is figuring out what's wrong with Luke Danes. By far the Sox's most reliable pitcher, he has been 2-6 with an 8.15 ERA since the team came back from its four-day break on July 15. He was behind the loss in his last three starts, with 21 runs allowed over 23 innings. It's a performance that has insiders murmuring if his contract negotiations are playing into his shaky performance, or if he is nursing an injury that has yet to be disclosed._

 _It is a highly unusual stretch of errors from a normally unshakable player, who racked up his best stats during the 1993 and 1994 seasons, tumultuous years off the field for him. Whatever is going on in his head, it is to everyone's benefit that Danes works it out soon._

 _Sports Illustrated: July 28, 1999_

—-

Two weeks after the mind-blowing kiss that had yet to fade from her memory, Lorelai sat in front of the newly purchased family iMac and snarled at the screen.

She loved the computer and had little issue with it. The line had come in an array of colors, making them look like Jolly Rancher lamps. She and Rory had debated colors until they finally had to flip a coin to choose between strawberry and grape. The strawberry iMac won the coin toss.

No, her problem was with the stubborn idiot at the other end of her email. The idiot that had fled Stars Hollow after one of the sexiest moments of her life, who had restricted his communication to the emails that he loathed. That's how much their kiss had spooked him.

She had spent the first day after the kiss being angry at Luke, for yelling at her then rabbiting. Yes, his reasons were sane and valid ones, but thwarted arousal had its way of manifesting in being outright pissed. It had taken a lot of sleep, an evening of properly wallowing, and an extended session with her handheld shower massager to start to wrap her mind around everything.

Lorelai didn't dare breathe to Rory what had happened. Her daughter was her best friend, but there was no way she was going to tell her 14-year-old kid that their baseball card guy nearly had wild, vertical sex with her on the wall next to the front door. She had always told Rory carefully edited stories about previous boyfriends before, but she couldn't. Not this time.

She also didn't confide in Sookie, who bless her, would just skip straight to the kissing part and miss the fact that there had been a yelling part. And a "we shouldn't had done this" part. By the time Sookie realized what had happened, Luke would be instantly recast in the the bad guy role and Lorelai didn't want people to see him in that light. Not in Stars Hollow. Sookie had her own odd flirtation going with Jackson, their produce guy, and anything that made its way to him would make it across Stars Hollow nearly as fast as broadcasting it to Miss Patty, Babette, or Eastside Tilly would.

So Lorelai spent way too much time in her own head, wondering why the hell Luke had suddenly freaked out. Yeah, she did work for him, but not like in the boss lusting after his secretary on a daily basis sort of way. She knew it probably had more to do with what Babette had told her about Anna Nardini claiming that her daughter was also his, but then it turned out she wasn't.

The problem now was that Luke refused to sign off on any of the applications that she had narrowed down for the hardware store. Andrew's extension for the bookstore was among the three finalists. The other two were from a sweet guy named Cesar who wanted to turn the space into a diner; and Marie, an older lady who wanted to open one of those pottery studios that allowed people to select a piece, paint it, then the studio would fire and glaze it for them. As much as Lorelai would prefer Rory didn't gut her in her sleep, she was torn between the diner and the pottery studio. Both would be far more beneficial for the town as tourist draws, and people had to travel all the way out to the interstate to get anything that was close to diner-like food. OK, it wasn't like the interstate wasn't that far, but cheeseburgers and chili fries within walking distance? Sign her up.

It couldn't be work keeping Luke away. He had sent her very short responses to all her other emails: various combinations of "yes," "no," and "OK." But they needed to have an actual conversation for this final selection, and the man just wasn't budging.

So Lorelai took to her old tactic and left lengthy conversations each night on Luke's answering machine. She now knew the precise timing of how long a message had to be and how many messages could fit on a tape. Each night, when Rory went to bed, she pulled out her calling card and spent 15 minutes chattering about how the final fixes to the hardware store were going, how many viewings his childhood home had received, and other various things that happened her day. She talked about Rory at a town meeting shyly introducing the concept of installing a small box in the town square where people could leave or take free books as needed. She chatted about the inn, her latest attempts at cooking, and how she had turned his springform pie pan into a planter. One time, she just turned on her stereo and made sure he had 15 minutes of nothing but Styx and the Bangles on his machine.

She didn't say a word about the kiss or Anna Nardini.

She also didn't talk about Luke's spate of bad luck on the field. Mainly to make sure that the man was still breathing, she tuned into every Red Sox game that was televised in Stars Hollow. She watched the shadows under his eyes grow deeper and wondered if they matched the ones beneath her own. She listened to the commentators speculate why a normally reliable, well-performing player was going through a spate of spectacularly awful games. She suspected the answer had something to do with her.

But now enough was enough. Lorelai stared at her email, at the mailbox that hadn't magically changed in the past few minutes. They were nearly halfway through the 30-day period Taylor had threatened them with. Miss Patty had told her that Taylor was already sniffing out lawyers to utilize once the month had passed. But, he was also being laughed out of every lawyer's office from Stars Hollow to Hartford. He was even talking about hiring someone from Yale's law school to take on the case.

Lorelai sat back, sighed, then clicked a button to open a web browser. It was time for her last resort. She located the schedule for the Red Sox, then consulted her calendar.

If you didn't want Lorelai Gilmore on your doorstep, do not open a joint bank account with her. Otherwise, she could get documents in the mail that included your address.

* * *

The drive from Stars Hollow to the outskirts of Boston wasn't that bad, and the suburb was pretty nice. It reminded Lorelai of upper class Hartford in a way, but not quite so stuffy. This one reeked of having enough money to put into keeping older buildings in good use, not building giant mansions to show off existing wealth.

The duplex looked like most other homes on the one-way street: twin Victorian-era buildings smashed together to create a single living unit. A teenage boy, sans shirt, was pushing a lawn mower across both halves of the yard out front. Lorelai pulled to the curb across the street from the home and stretched her legs. She reached back in the car for the grocery bag he had left behind - sans her new planter, of course - and her purse. She had switched to one of her larger totes that could handle all the paperwork she carried for the hardware store building. And the real estate agent had found a buyer for the house, so Lorelai offered to kill two birds with one stone and bring the papers he needed to sign with her.

She crossed the street and headed up the walk to the house. The dark-haired kid mowing the lawn had a familial resemblance, and she wondered if this was the nephew he had told Rory about.

"Hey!" Lorelai called to the kid.

It took him a moment to hear her over the roar of the lawn mower, and he shut it off. He eyed her suspiciously. "Yeah?"

Lorelai gestured to the half of the house with the number that matched the one on the papers she bore. "Is Luke home?"

The suspicion turned to a curious mix of teenage disdain and loathing. "Who wants to know?"

"Clearly I do, since I'm standing right in front of his door."

"There's a doorbell. You can ring it." The kid scoffed. "By the way, no solicitors."

"I'm not soliciting anything."

He ignored her. "No solicitors, no reporters, no lawyers, no people asking nosy questions. Oh, and don't even think to bribe me with money, candy, video games, or a pony."

"Asking if someone is home is nosy?" When the kid responded with a stony expression, Lorelai marched over to him. "Look, kid, I appreciate a good round of snark as much as you do. But I have a legitimate reason to be here."

"Sure. That's what they all say," the kid snorted.

The front door to the other half of the duplex opened, and a blonde-haired woman peeked out. Like the kid, her posture was rigid, eyes suspicious. "Can we help you?"

"I got this, Mom," the kid said.

Lorelai ignored him. "Sorry to bother you. I'm Lorelai Gilmore and …"

The door slammed open as the woman rushed out, her face completely transformed. "You're Lorelai? Oh my God, you're Lorelai!" She reached them, then smacked the teen in the back of the head. "What're you doing treating her like that? That's _Lorelai_!"

"Ow! I've got no clue what a Lorelai is!"

"The lady from Stars Hollow helping your uncle with the property there!" The woman grabbed Lorelai's arm and steered her toward her half of the duplex. "Don't mind him. He's just being Jess."

"Hey, it would help if I actually knew her name before now!" Jess called after them. He sighed, then turned the lawn mower back on.

Lorelai quickly searched her mental Rolodex as she was all but pushed inside the front door. "Liz, right?"

"Yeah! Oh, it's so good to finally meet you! Here, let me get you a drink. Coffee, right?"

"Yeah, thanks."

Liz led the way into a large living room that had several well-worn sofas with colorful throw pillows scattered on them. A dining table held bits of some sort of art project. Shoes and coats were haphazardly stacked on a coat rack near the door. It was clean, but cluttered. The living room opened into a generous-sized kitchen, separated by a bar with several stools pushed under it. Lorelai slid onto one of these as Liz moved to what looked to be an expensive coffeemaker with a grinder next to it. She pulled whole beans out of a cabinet.

"So, my idiot brother's out getting groceries and running a few errands, but he should be back within the next hour or so." Liz put a hefty amount of beans into the hopper and started it. "Did you bring your daughter?"

It pleased her that Liz knew about her daughter. It meant that Mr. Silent was apparently at least talking to his sister. "Rory? No, she's attending an all-day book club thing at the library, then she's going over to my best friend's house until I get back."

"Aw, that's a shame. I've heard a lot about both of you." Liz gave Lorelai a somewhat embarrassed smile. "I screen my brother's calls while he's gone. Don't worry, once I realize it's you, I just skip to the next message. I'm also still really good friends with Carrie Duncan."

Lorelai mentally winced. When it came to the hierarchy of Stars Hollow gossips, Carrie Duncan was pretty high on the scale. She also had made no secret since of how hot she found Luke since the town meeting he crashed. It was pretty hard to escape. "Oh, Crazy Carrie!" she said lightly.

Liz's smile indicated she had a good idea about what Lorelai thought of Carrie. She poured the ground coffee in the coffeemaker, added water, then started it. "Yeah, still the same. I also talked to Miss Patty recently. I really hope you're here to put my brother's head back on straight, 'cause nothing I'm saying is getting through that thick skull of his."

"I'm just here to get his final sign-off on one of the hardware store applicants. Easy-peasy, just need his John Hancock and away I go," Lorelai said with a quick wave of the hand, tempted to give into a sudden urge to throw the papers at Liz and run. Liz surely had opinions on her father's property, right? Maybe she could forge her brother's signature. That possibly could hold up in a court of law. Maybe.

"No! You don't get it! This is good!" Liz reached for the coffee pot, almost forgetting that it was still running. She jerked her hand back seconds before disaster happened.

"Sorry?"

Liz grabbed two large mugs from a nearby cabinet. "Ever since we were kids and our mom got sick, Luke just … folded in on himself, you know? He just kept playing baseball, and you never knew what he was thinking. I mean, he cried when Mom died, things like that, but he never actually talked to anyone. It was like that too with the whole mess with Anna Nardini." Liz hurled the name as if it was a viscous curse. "Just plays the game and cooks. He started doing that when we were teenagers. Mainly it was either that or starve, because Dad's idea of a good meal was going up to the Howard Johnson's that used to be near the interstate or a pour bowl of cold cereal. It took us a decade to figure out where Mom kept the coupons, so Dad stashed them in an old coffee can." Liz laughed and nodded toward a metal can sitting on top of the refrigerator. "I do the same thing. Anyhow, when he was 12, Luke got sick of it one day. He raided his allowance, marched down to Doose's, and bought a box of Tuna Helper and a couple cans of tuna, because that's all he could afford. That's when he started cooking. When something's bothering him, he just does it _more_."

Liz moved to the freezer and threw it open to reveal tray after tray of neatly stacked plastic containers. "Let's just say that Jess and I won't starve any time soon. If any of this is edible." She shook her head fondly at them. "If Luke's too upset, you couldn't feed what he makes to a feral cat. I know. I tried."

Lorelai just gawked at the freezer. The only thing in hers was a package of Toaster Strudels and a frozen pizza. "And the past couple of weeks?"

Liz beamed as if she'd won the lottery. "Worst he's ever cooked."

"And you're happy about that?"

Liz closed the freezer. "No, no, you don't understand. He's rattled. You've seen those last few games he's pitched in, right? He's actually _bothered_ by something. I know something happened in Stars Hollow, and it's really none of my business, but you're breaking through his shell. So whatever it is you're doing, keep doing it."

* * *

They spent the next half hour talking about their kids, realizing very quickly that Rory and Jess would get along very well should they get the chance to meet. The mouthy kid really did have a love of books that rivaled Rory's and a dream of becoming an author. It was enough for Lorelai to almost invite Liz to come to Stars Hollow with Jess one day, but then she remember that she was supposed to be creating space between her and Luke, not bringing them closer.

Liz worked in an art gallery in the city and had to go into work, but she waved toward the door linking the two halves of the duplex and told Lorelai she was welcome to wait.

Luke's half of the duplex didn't exactly scream man cave to Lorelai, but it was definitely different from Liz's side. Her space exploded with color, with various craft projects in process everywhere and lots of evidence that a teenager lived in the house. It reminded her in a way of the Crap Shack. This side was fairly neat but boasted a couple deep bookcases filled with titles that would make Rory drool. The TV was large, and the VHS collection leaned heavily toward sports and action movies. She spotted a few DVDs along one shelf and felt a stab of envy. Maybe one day, she and Rory could afford a DVD player. Whenever the next new technology came out. Until then Lou, their trusty VCR, would suffice.

The L-shaped sofa looked plush and, thank goodness, wasn't leather. A knit throw was folded on the back of it, probably courtesy of Liz. Lorelai dropped her purse onto the coffee table and sat, letting the cool and quiet dark of the room sink in. The blinds were closed to keep out a good bit of the midday heat, and she heard the low whirl of central air conditioning. Something else the Crap Shack lacked. All she had were flaky window units that decided they would function on their own time schedule and not hers. More often than not, she and Rory either fled the house entirely during the day or were plastered to fans with giant bowls of ice set in front of them.

She slid her feet out of her flats and tucked her legs under her as she got comfortable on the couch. Liz said it wouldn't take long, and she could stand to close her eyes for a few minutes. It felt like those nights without sleep were hitting her all at once, and a quick nap never hurt anyone.

It took her less than 30 seconds to fall asleep.

The first thing Lorelai realized as she surfaced was that she was now laying on the sofa. The throw that had been folded on the back now covered her, and she kicked it to the ground as she shifted her legs.

The second thing was the smell. It was heavenly. Whatever it was, it had some sort of herbed breading, because the scent hung in the air nearly as seductive as expensive perfume. She blinked her eyes open and puzzled over her surroundings before it came back to her. She was on the outskirts of Boston, not at home. And if she was smelling food, that meant … she bolted upright to see Luke in the kitchen, standing over the stove. He looked over at her.

"Hey."

She just stared at him. Storming out the way he had, leaving her as turned on as he did, the weeks of silence, and all he could say was "hey?"

To his credit, he seemed nervous. His eyes dropped away from her as soon as soon as he gave the greeting, and he gave something in the skillet a ferocious shake.

"I figured you'd be hungry," Luke explained, as though finding her in his house was an everyday occurrence. Granted, Liz had probably tipped him off. But there was no anger either, nothing that indicated he had coldly informed her that a romantic attraction between would go absolutely nowhere.

Lorelai's stomach betrayed her by choosing that moment to growl audibly. It was a comedic cliche that would make Mel Brooks weep.

She got to her feet, leaving the throw behind on the floor as she tried to hoard her anger. But, damn it, Luke was _barefoot_ , and there was something about seeing a guy barefoot. He even had nice toes. His toes were nicer than hers. His toes would look amazing in a pair of strappy sandals painted with pink polish. Not that he would do such a thing, but his toes were just that nice. She filed the cute toes away along with the cheekbones she admired during the town meeting and tried to remember that she was supposed to be mad.

She reached the bar that separated them. "Not that it isn't every woman's fantasy to be waking up to Emeril in the kitchen, but I figured you'd be mad I'm here."

"I'm not mad at you. Here." He pushed a mug of coffee in front of her and the last of her anger slipped away. Food, coffee, _and_ barefoot. All he needed to do now was hold a puppy and she'd be at his feet.

"Well. You sure made me feel otherwise."

They fell into silence, knowing that she wasn't referring just to his brief emails and his evasive maneuvers regarding the hardware store tenant. "Look, I know I screwed up regarding the stuff that needs to be done on the store and the house. I've got tomorrow off too. I'll head into Stars Hollow, do what needs to be done."

"Or, you can sign the papers I brought with me and we can discuss the hardware store candidates over this food that you're fixing. Is it edible?"

Luke scowled at her. "Of course it's edible. Why would you think it's … Liz," he groaned. "You want a sister? I'll give her to you. Comes with a free 15-year-old nephew."

"Thanks, I'll pass. All you, pal. Besides, got a soon-to-be 15-year-old of my own."

"Where's Rory?"

Lorelai finally realized he was making some sort of pork cutlets, and that only made the hunger worse. She cast her eye around the room for something she could munch on until the food was ready. "Spending the day with Lane. You remember her, the kid that was with Rory during the interviews."

"Oh yeah, the tofu pie girl."

"The same. They're living the life going between the library and the bookstore while smuggling the music Lane's mom doesn't want her to have."

"Which is?"

Lorelai shook her head when she realized the only thing she was finding was a damn fruit bowl. Seriously, was the guy on a health food kick? "Anything that isn't a traditional Christian hymn sung in Korean."

"Oh, Mrs. Kim." Luke plated the cutlets and set them on the counter just below the bar. He dug into a grocery bag sitting on another counter and pulled out what suspiciously looked like a vegetable.

Lorelai narrowed her eyes. Yes, that was definitely asparagus he was holding. "You know the Kims?" she asked casually, reaching over the bar to see if any of the breading was loose enough on the cutlets to pick off. You know, for testing purposes.

"Yeah, they immigrated to the US when I was in high school. I remember she was pregnant, but I didn't make the connection. Is Mr. Kim still a missionary?"

It was the first true interest Luke had shown in any Stars Hollow resident other than herself, and it surprised her to the point that she stopped trying to pick the breading off a promising-looking cutlet. "Yeah, he is. I've seen him once … maybe twice. At one point, I thought Lane was the product of immaculate conception."

Luke put the asparagus in the skillet and poured a bit of water on top of them, steam billowing once it hit the pan. "Nah, I remembered when they moved in. Taylor gave them a really hard time at first. He was terrified having Koreans in town would drive down the property values."

"Of course he would," Lorelai muttered. "He doesn't seem to have an issue with her now."

"That's because she informed him that the one driving down property values him thanks to his mouth, and if anything, she would be the one to save them. Through Jesus, of course."

Lorelai nodded solemnly at him. "Of course."

Luke shot her that half grin of his that made her toes curl. "Then she slammed a copy of the New Testament down on the counter in front of him in the market and stormed out."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"You like Mrs. Kim."

"Yeah, I actually do." Luke pulled the platter away as Lorelai reached for a cutlet again. "Stop picking at those."

Lorelai slumped against the bar. "But I'm hungry."

"I'm making lunch."

"These are ready!" She pointed at the cutlets.

"The parmesan cutlets go with the asparagus." He gestured to the skillet with the spatula he held.

"But I need sustenance right now! You heard my stomach. It's the successor to the Glenn Miller Band, and I'm in the mood."

He waved the hand holding the skillet toward the hall. "Go wash your hands, and it'll be ready."

She scowled at him. "What am I, five?"

"Go."

She stuck her tongue at his back and disappeared down the hall to find the bathroom.

Because the table was covered with papers, they carried their lunch over to the couch to eat, sitting next to each other on the long side of the L-shape. The food was every bit as good as the lemon roll and the pie Luke had made for her before. Lorelai frowned at the asparagus, picking at it before finally taking a bite. It didn't completely taste like ass, so she choked down the rest of the spear and focuses on the cutlet instead. Oh, glorious, glorious pork. Come to mama.

She closed her eyes as she took a bite, toes curling into the carpet. Man, she was blessed with having good cooks in her life. She opened them to find Luke staring at her as intensely as he had when she tried the lemon roll. And the pie. Oh god, she was turning food into an erotic experience again.

Lorelai stared at her plate, cursing her lack of a sex life and this living thing that seemed to be vibrating between them. She put it on the coffee table and reached for her purse, which she had placed on the couch beside her. "Right, so the candidates. I was thinking …"

"I'm sorry."

It took every bit of self control not to look up at Luke as she pulled out the applications. "Out of the three, I'm more leaning toward the diner applicant, but …"

"Lorelai." He rested his head in his hands, fingers digging into his scalp. "God, I'm not doing any of this right."

"I'm not …"

He set his own plate next to hers on the coffee table before turning to face her. "It wasn't you. You've got to know that. Look, what Anna did left me all messed up in the head, and I don't wanna drag you into it. Especially because you've got Rory. So let's just look through these, pick one, and we'll keep things professional. I hate email, we both know that, but I'll be better about it. I promise."

Professional. As in emails and maybe a few phone calls. As in no lunches or surprise pizza flown in from Chicago or conversations with her kid about books. Everything in her _hurt_ , but he was right. This was exactly what she was expecting when she'd driven here from Stars Hollow. They needed to establish boundaries and keep them. Then why did she feel like crying?

Lorelai's vision blurred, and to her horror, a single tear splashed onto the paper she held.

And Luke saw it.

"Geez," he hissed, and she sprang to her feet.

"Bad idea. Seriously bad idea." She shoved the applications at him as he got to his. "Here. Call. Email. Send a smoke signal. Just let me know at some point before Taylor manages to find a lawyer stupid enough to represent him. I need to go." She looked around in a panic for her shoes before remembering they were practically right next to her, kicked partially under the sofa.

"Lorelai."

She jammed her feet into the flats. "Look. I can't. I have a job. Two actually. I have a kid. I have enough drama in my life thanks to my parents, and the last thing I need is someone who's going to run out on me because he can't handle it."

"It isn't you!"

Because she wasn't a coward, or at least she repeatedly told herself this, Lorelai looked Luke square in the eye. "I know it isn't me. And it isn't fair that every time you look like you want to kiss me, you push me away like I do asparagus."

She wasn't sure what about that caused it. Maybe asparagus was some sort of weird turn on. But he stepped into her and kissed her, the applications fluttering to their feet as his hands dove into her hair. And, damn it, she had nothing to lose. She returned the kiss with every bit of heat she had in her, deliberating rubbing herself against him and enjoying the low growl of arousal he gave in response. Her knees wobbled, and he guided her onto the couch, pressing her into the cushions as he trailed his lips down the side her neck.

"You're the one who hid the rest of the asparagus in your napkin," he murmured into her skin, and she laughed as he pushed himself onto his elbows and stared down at her.

Lorelai could see the internal battle he was fighting, and she thought of all the advice she'd given Rory in the past about being scared. About working through your fears to get what you want. In that moment, in that very second, she knew what she wanted. Hell, somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that she wanted this all along - probably from the moment she barged into the unlocked hardware store building and confessed her worries about Chilton.

She wanted to run. She knew how to run. Rory accused her of never letting a guy get too close, of cutting things off before she let it start to get serious, but Rory didn't understand. There was so much Lorelai was giving up if she let a guy get too close.

She stared into eyes that were as terrified as her own and knew she wasn't the only one with a lot to loose.

Luke let out a long slow breath. Then he pushed himself off her, sitting on the other end of the couch. He rested his elbows on his knees. "You need to know about Anna," he said, and it sounded like he was tearing each word from his soul. "I need to tell you about her."


	9. Chapter 8

_Summer 1991_

There were times Luke marveled at just how far he had come from Stars Hollow. And there were others that made him think he hadn't ventured very far from his hometown at all.

The bowl of various combined alcohols that formed a potent drink was one of those moments.

And a small part of Luke wished it was actually a cup of Miss Patty's Founder's Day punch he was holding in his hand. That at least had good memories associated with it. When he was 15, Rachel had sneaked enough of punch for them to get plastered for the first time under the bleachers at Stars Hollow High's stadium. It also led to fumbling around that was now funny but mortified him at the time. He and Rachel had zero idea of what they were doing. It wasn't like sex education had helped them in any way. A maiden aunt of Taylor Doose's taught their 10th grade health class, and they weren't even afforded the courtesy of learning how to put a condom on a banana.

That bit of knowledge had come from Liz.

Luke lifted the red Solo cup to his nose, took one sniff, then eyed the plant next to him. He wondered if pouring it out would kill it. It's not like he actually knew these people. He'd fallen in step with his teammates, on a rare day off in a city that wasn't home. Los Angeles was about as far from Boston as you could get without wading into the Pacific. The palm trees were nice to look at, and walking along the beach had done more to settle his soul than years of losing himself in the job. Part of him had wanted to take a photo and send it to his dad. Another part yearned to go home. He just wasn't quite sure where home was any longer.

It definitely wasn't in this mansion, with a ton of crap that bordered on the gaudy. His teammates mixed with Hollywood actors and wannabes, and several of them were already three sheets to the wind. He frowned at the cup and thought of joining them.

"It smells horrific, but it won't kill you."

Luke glanced up from the cup. Dark hair curled around a familiar face, and her smile was warm and welcoming. Like him, she held a cup of poison that masqueraded itself as punch. She winked at him, and then he placed her face. Anna Nardini. He'd seen enough of her show at the clubhouse to place her. It was her house he was in, her furniture he was silently mocking, her houseplant he was considering murdering with alcohol.

"You're the doctor," he replied in the lamest come-on known to man. He nearly tossed the punch in his own face in response.

"That," Anna replied, "was terrible."

He shrugged. No use not admitting it. "Yeah, well, I can't even blame the punch."

"I bet if you actually drank it, you could retroactively blame it on the punch."

Something about the way she said it reminded him so much of Rachel that Luke found himself smiling at Anna. He lifted his cup to hers, and they clanked them before downing back the contents.

Yup. It was as lethal as he thought it would be.

But it also made him far more confident when she led him up the stairs to her bed.

* * *

"So, we started dating. It's not easy when you're living on opposite ends of the country. I mean, being a spouse of any professional player's an exercise in endurance. You're gone for stupid long periods of time. Even when you're home, you're fighting to see each other a good chunk of the year. I never thought she was the one, you know? But we had a good time until we began fighting. She was starting to make it big, and she decided I was useful to have on her arm. I had just become the team's main starting pitcher, and my own career was doing well. We split a year later. Two months after we broke up, she told me she was pregnant."

* * *

 _April 1993_

Luke tried to bite back his fury as he walked into the hospital, the anger drowning out his intense dislike of them. He _told_ Anna he wanted to be there when the baby was born. It had been the latest in an endless series of fights they seemed to be having since she told him about her pregnancy six months earlier. He wanted to make it work. God knows, he tried. Hard. The first couple months had been great. Anna had been past her morning sickness, and they were making an effort to live together despite his career on the East Coast.

OK, the effort had been on his part. Anna steadfastly refused to spend any sort of time in Boston. She also turned up her nose at being taken to Stars Hollow to visit his parents' graves and yelled at him when he suggested flying Liz and Jess out to meet her. So all his free time was taken flying cross-country to appease an Anna that had become far worse than the woman he'd broken up with. He proposed several times, and she refused every single time. It made no sense at all.

It felt like he was a glorified babysitter rather than a boyfriend, especially as Anna's pregnancy had gotten near full term. Even attending the doctor's appointments together seemed like a battle, but he put his foot down and went to as many appointments with her as he could.

When the doctor pointed out the baby girl in the sonogram, it felt like someone had seized his heart. That was his child in there. A bit of him and Anna. No matter how bad things got, he would have a daughter. He carried a printout of the sonogram in his wallet, reminding himself every night that he _would_ be a good father to his kid.

Well, he wasn't getting off to a rousing start now, was he? Granted, it would help if the mother of his child actually told him she'd given birth. Luke didn't even find out from Anna directly. Her mother had called to deliver a scathing set down over his lack of attendance in the delivery room. He had skipped that night's game against the Astros and taken the first flight to Los Angeles.

The nursery was on the way to Anna's room, and he found himself lingering outside the window rather than walk into a fight. He quickly picked out the right bassinet, and his heart gave two hard thumps at the small bundle wrapped within. He caught the attending nurse's eye, tapped on the window, and held up his wrist. A wristband had been strapped on once they verified his ID and that Anna had recorded him as the child's father.

The nurse led him into a room where he washed and donned scrubs, then he was pushed into a chair as the baby was brought out to him. No name yet, the nurse informed him as she settled the baby in his arms. He remembered quickly from holding Jess how to do it right, and the nurse stepped away to give him privacy so he could greet his daughter for the first time.

Luke let himself look down into that tiny face, then froze.

* * *

"At first, I thought I had the wrong kid. For days, I was convinced that despite the stupid wristbands that someone mixed up my kid with someone else's. I knew Anna had started seeing other people before we broke it off completely. I suspected she had been cheating on me with another one of my teammates. To this day, I still don't know who the father is. But when I saw Anna's daughter for the first time, I knew right away she wasn't mine."

* * *

Luke left the hospital, refusing to confront Anna while she laid up with her family surrounding her. He went to her place three weeks after she brought baby April home, and informed her that they were done. With one problem. Despite everything Anna had put his name on the baby's birth certificate as the father.

He considered swallowing it and living with the lie for April's sake. She needed a father figure in her life. All kids did. But it was just wrong. Whoever he was, April's father needed to know he had a child in the world. He thought of a future with Anna, and saw nothing but a bleak loneliness as fight after fight rendered whatever scraps of affection he still had for Anna null. Not that there was much to begin with.

So he left. He changed his phone number and walked out of Anna Nardini's life.

Six months later, the court summons came.

* * *

"It took a year to sort everything out. Anna was suing for child support for a kid that wasn't even mine, so through the team, I got a stupid expensive lawyer who ordered a DNA test. Anna's legal team balked, arguing that I had accepted April as mine in the months leading up to the birth and my name was on the birth certificate. The test wasn't a surprise. Whoever the dad was, it wasn't me. So her legal team ordered a second DNA test. Same result. Finally, the judge ruled that I had no financial obligation to April, and even went so far as to chastise Anna for lying to me about it. My name was removed from April's birth certificate, and I thought it was over. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me."

Luke wasn't sure he'd ever spoken so much at once. His throat was raw from all the talking, and he yearned for a glass of water. As his words hung in the air, Lorelai suddenly pushed off the sofa. She stomped into the kitchen, yanking open the freezer.

"What're you doing?" Luke got to his feet as Lorelai rummaged through the frozen meat and vegetables he kept stocked in there, muttering under her breath.

"Of course he wouldn't have any," she said, more to herself than to him. She brushed by him and through the unlocked door leading into Liz's half of the duplex.

Jess sprawled on the couch, an open copy of _Franny & Zooey _in his hands. He sprang into a sitting position as Lorelai tore into the room. "What the …?"

Luke followed, shaking his head at his nephew as Lorelai headed into Liz's kitchen and into her freezer. "Knew it," she said, emerging with an unopened pint of Ben & Jerry's.

"Hey, that doesn't belong to you," Jess protested.

"I'll pay your mom back," Lorelai tossed over her shoulder as she took her prize back into the other half of the duplex.

Jess gave his uncle a baleful stare. "You know how to pick 'em."

"Just go back to reading." Luke pulled the door behind him and frowned at the bolt. He had never locked his sister or Jess out of his half of the building, but for the first time, he was tempted.

In the interim, Lorelai had dug out two spoons and was headed back to the couch. "This requires ice cream."

He walked into the kitchen for that glass of water. "I don't eat ice cream."

"Everyone eats ice cream," she said as he filled the glass.

He took two deep swallows before he felt somewhat normal again. "Not the lactose intolerant."

Lorelai pried the top off the pint and licked the ice cream on the underside. "Are you?"

"No, but I'm still not having ice cream." But Luke could happily watch her eat ice cream for the rest of the day.

"I don't know about you, but I _need_ ice cream right now." She dug in, waved her spoon at him. "Come on, at least a bite."

Resigned, he sat next to her and took the spoon she offered. He scooped out the tiniest of bites and sampled it. Cookie dough. Damn it, Liz. It was the one flavor of ice cream he permitted himself to eat, and his sister knew it. Luke took a bigger spoonful.

"Did I find your kryptonite?" Lorelai teased.

No, because he was pretty sure Lorelai herself was his kryptonite, not the damn ice cream.

They polished off the pint, and as they did so, Luke found the words coming a bit easier.

"By then, the media had gotten ahold of it. And these Hollywood types are crazy, especially with those rags you buy at the store. I ignored it throughout the legal case, figuring they would lay off once it came out that I wasn't April's father. But it got worse. Anna knew the system, and I didn't. She started spinning that I had lied and paid off the court to back out of my obligations to April. There were all these doctored photos of me with women I'd never even met, claiming I was sleeping around and getting them pregnant. I even had some lady spit on me when I was in the grocery store before she said she would pray to Jesus for my soul. I kept getting hounded by reporters, and it was putting my career at risk."

Luke jabbed at the bottom of the pint with his spoon. "What's ironic is that I was playing better than ever. But the press was bad for the team. So, I decided to prove I was too valuable to lose. I didn't have anything else. At the worst of it, Liz showed up with Jess in tow. She'd fallen off the radar after Jess' no-good dad split, and I couldn't find her. But she managed to find me, and she informed me that we were family and she wasn't going to leave me alone like that again." He glanced at the door linking the duplexes. "Liz was pretty messed up herself, especially after our dad died, but she read what happened to me in one of those tabloid rags. She didn't believe any of it. I suppose if anything good came out of it, it caused Liz to stop drinking and clean up her own life. She yelled at the reporters at the top of her lungs. Don't tell her this, but she sounded just like dad when she did so. I bought this duplex and we moved here. I spent all my time with Liz and Jess or at the clubhouse. Eventually, it almost stopped. It gets brought up again from time to time. I think you know the rest."

Lorelai didn't say anything, and Luke stared at the sticky drips of ice cream left in the empty container, too afraid to meet her gaze. He didn't want to see the pity he knew was there. She placed the container on the coffee table and took his hand, lacing their fingers together.

They sat in silence until Jess strolled in, asking for a ride to a friend's house.

* * *

Rory was reading on the couch when Lorelai walked in the house, and she was amused to find her daughter clutching a copy of _Franny & Zooey_. She really should orchestrate a meeting between her and Liz's son.

"Everything go OK?" Rory asked casually, then did a double take when she saw Lorelai's face. Mascara was smudged on her cheeks from where she had tried to wipe it away, and her eyes were red-rimmed. "Have you been crying?"

"Peachy keen, everything's fine!" A completely bald-faced lie. She had pulled over in the parking lot of a McDonald's and had cried her eyes out. For Luke. For April, who was doomed to be a pawn in her mother's life. For Liz and Jess. The pint of ice cream she had shared with Luke threatened to revisit itself in the parking lot.

Once the tears passed, the anger had swept in. Suddenly, banishment to Litchfield's library was too good for that little collection of Anna Nardini movies that had been banished from the Crap Shack. Screw the environment, only fire was good enough for those things.

"Which one did you pick?" Rory asked

Shit. "We couldn't, so Luke kept the applications and we're going over them again soon." Almost the truth. Mainly because she had forgotten them where they had fallen to the ground during their wild pre-confessional makeout session, and she hadn't thought at all afterward.

She looked at the clock. It was just now getting dark, and part of her wanted to go to bed. But more than anything, she wanted to snuggle with her kid.

"Hey, call in the usual to Joe's while I change. And you pick the movie."

An hour later, they were on the sofa, curled together with giant slices of pepperoni and watching _Pretty Woman_. But her thoughts kept drifting to an achingly lonely man who had shut himself away from the world to escape pain. She hugged Rory hard and tried not to cry into her pizza.

* * *

Cesar Muñoz worked as the night chef in a small 24-7 diner just off the interstate outside of Hartford. Luke came in shortly after 1 a.m., having just finished a game against Cleveland at Fenway. He ordered a turkey burger and a salad, silently approving of how the burger was made. It wasn't dried out, which was all too easy to do to turkey burgers.

The diner was small enough that Cesar also served as cashier and server for the overnight shift, and he came out from the kitchen to see if Luke needed anything else as he finished his meal.

Luke held up the application he brought with him, one of the ones Lorelai had left behind. "You interviewed with my …" Girlfriend? Manager? To be determined? Hell, he wasn't sure where to place Lorelai in the four days since he told her about Anna. "With Lorelai Gilmore in Stars Hollow," he amended. "Got a moment to chat?"

"Oh, yeah!" Cesar gratefully took the seat opposite. "I was starting to wonder when I hadn't heard back from the application. Figured I didn't get it, you know? But Ms. Gilmore seemed like the type to actually call and tell you no in person."

"How long have you tried to get a place?"

"About three years now. Let's just say my face is too charming for a lot of these New England towns." Cesar flashed Luke a wide grin. "Why don't you open a Mexican restaurant, they tell me. But that's not my dream, you know?"

He understood that. "And what is?"

"I watched _Happy Days_ all the time when I was a kid, read _Archie_ comic books. I wanted to run one of those types of diners. You know, like a soda hop. I've been saving for the space. I took some classes at the community college in Hartford, and there's a business outline there." Cesar outlined his plans for the building, which included preserving a lot of the built-in shelving his father had added to the place. "I've seen you on TV. You've got a wicked curve ball."

"Thanks." Luke braced himself for the oncoming accolades and fan gushing.

"You're the building owner, right?" Cesar asked, quickly switching topics.

"Yeah."

"Ms. Gilmore told me a bit about the history, but your old man built it, right?"

"Yeah." And he found himself telling Cesar about the history of the building, wishing he had some of those early photos right when the store opened. There was one Liz had which had him and her covered in sawdust after they discovered a pile of it. As he talked, Cesar had fished a pencil out of his apron and was taking notes on a napkin.

Luke went with his gut. "If you still want it, the lease is yours. There's my dad's old office above the space, but it can be turned into a small efficiency if you need an apartment. I can recommend a good builder who'll work with you to turn it into what you need. Just tell Lorelai what you want, and we'll make sure the work gets done."

* * *

He hadn't been in the Independence Inn since he was in high school. He'd taken odd jobs around the place, helping Mia out to earn a bit of extra cash. It was a good way to hone the handyman skills his dad had taught him, which went on to serve him well once he bought the duplex. What Luke hadn't told Lorelai was he had done most of the work in rehabbing the space for him, Liz, and Jess. With the media situation the way it was in the days after the scandal, he hadn't wanted to risk strangers having access to their things. He hadn't been so worried about himself, but rather Liz and Jess.

Once Liz moved in, her past exploits had gotten sucked into the fallout that was his life. So-called exclusive interviews with her ex-boyfriends, publication of her arrest records in New York and Connecticut littered the tabloids. At one point, child protection services had swooped in and attempted to take Jess away. It was only by the skin of their teeth and the same expensive lawyers that had gotten Luke through the court battle with Anna that Liz was able to maintain custody of Jess.

He sat in his dad's old truck, looking at the light burning in the front lobby of the inn. Six years since this entire mess began. He deserved to move on with his life. It was the one thing Luke realized as he went through the motions in the days following his talk with Lorelai. There hadn't been much of a chance to actually talk with her. Their phone calls had resumed, but the conversations steered far away from what they had talked about that day. They discussed the applications, Taylor, Rory, Liz, and Jess. She told him she was filling in for the night manager at the Independence for a couple of days, so Rory was spending the nights with Lane.

Luke wasn't even sure why he had come here. After chatting more with Cesar, he found himself order a burger and fries to go. The food sat next to him now, slowly cooling in its Styrofoam container. They were flying out to Anaheim in less than a day, and it would be another week before he had a day off. He was tired of the limbo, of being lonely. He wanted to see Lorelai more than he wanted his next breath. It was those things that propelled him toward the inn's front door.

And there she was, head pillowed atop her arms on the front desk, softly snoring. For a moment, he simply forgot how to breathe. He wondered how she would take it if he walked over and started running his hands through her hair.

Lorelai sniffed a bit. "Whoever has the cheeseburger, just leave it on the desk and back away slowly," she muttered into the polished wood of the desk.

Luke did as she asked, setting the container a few inches away from her nose. She sniffed once again, then cracked open an eye. "Man, those genies come up with some realistic hallucinations these days."

He wasn't sure he even wanted to know what she was dreaming about. "If you don't wake up and eat this, I'm dumping it in the trash."

She came fully awake, hair sticking out every which way as she snatched the container. "A wise man knows not to come between a Gilmore and food."

"I never said I was a wise man."

Lorelai had the top open and a fry in her mouth before Luke could blink. "Not bad. A little cold."

"Well, you'll be getting them fresh and hot soon enough."

"Oh yeah?" Lorelai took another fry, giving him a bright smile. "You picked the diner!"

"Yeah. I stopped by there on the way here and let him know." Luke outlined the same terms that he'd given Cesar, and she simply nodded.

"The house closed today," she informed him. "New owners are moving in this weekend. So we just need to get Cesar's paperwork squared away, and everything's good."

"Yup."

"And approval by the town for Cesar."

"Sorry, what?"

Annoyance flashed in her eyes, and she grabbed a pen to fidget with it. "Taylor came by the inn earlier. He knew we were close to picking a candidate, and told me that the selectmen would have final approval over the permits. It's just a formality, he claims."

Luke thought of how the other towns had turned Cesar away. All because of his heritage and his name. "They wouldn't shut out Cesar, would they?"

"I think Mrs. Kim would have Taylor's head if he tried. No, I think he just wants a say in everything. Taylor being Taylor and all. The meeting's on the 17th."

"I'll be there," Luke said without thought.

"You don't have to-"

"I'll be there," he repeated.

"OK." Lorelai absently doodled on a notepad with her pen before her head snapped up. "Hey, you should make me some coffee."

Luke just stared at her. She was out of her mind. "What? It's 3 a.m.!"

"C'mon, Luke. Please, please, please. You're here, I need coffee. The universe has put all the pieces in motion for this to happen. It's fate." Lorelai pulled a sign from beneath the desk, propping it next to the bell. She grabbed his arm and started tugging him toward the kitchen.

"How many have you had since starting work?" Luke asked, letting himself be towed along after her.

"None! Well, five. But yours is better!"

"Junkie," he scolded.

"Angel." Lorelai flashed a smile over her shoulder. "You've got wings, baby."

At that moment, Luke felt like he really could fly.


	10. Chapter 9

_**Editor's note:** OK, folks! This is where we really start to live up to our M rating. Read at work or in public at your own risk!_

* * *

There was a sense of plunging into the unknown as they walked into the dark kitchen. They hadn't brought up their loaded discussion a few days earlier, but she knew they had just crossed a line they weren't going to skitter back across. There was enough light from the moon and the lamps from the dining room that Luke was easily able to find the coffee machine and the right supplies without having to turn on the lights.

"You don't have a grinder," he said, more to fill the empty space than a criticism.

"Not since Sookie got her apron strings caught in it," Lorelai said as she boosted herself onto one of the worktables. "We're still grateful it wasn't one of her fingers, though Michel didn't stop making snide comments for days."

Luke frowned into the can of coffee. He didn't drink the stuff, but he at least made sure it was good for those who did drink it. With a resigned shrug, he measured out ground coffee and adjusted spices to doctor it. At least the brand was better than the one kept in the clubhouse.

"Liz said you started cooking when you guys were kids. Tiny Iron Chef?" Lorelai teased.

"More like necessity." Luke flipped the machine on and turned his back to it so he could watch her. She had dressed in clothes meant to handle a long overnight shift: soft slacks, a colorful, but comfortable shirt, minimal jewelry. She had fished a hair tie out of her pocket and had pulled her hair back while he prepared the coffee. "But it wasn't bad. I like doing it. I think it helped me earn my keep a time or two with the team."

He folded his arms across his chest, giving a half smile at the tile floor. "It's rough for rookies. A lot of baseball's hurry up and wait, but it's even worse when you're just in the major leagues. I was 21, and so damn eager to prove myself. So, I took over the kitchen at the clubhouse and decided to go around it that way."

Lorelai straightened abruptly. "Oh. _Oh!_ "

Luke frowned. "What?"

"Wait. Wait right here!" Lorelai leaped off the table and sped from the room so fast that he wondered if he said something to offend her. Before he could start fretting over it too much, she was back with her wallet in hand. She flipped it open, digging into the compartment behind her driver's license. She pulled out a slightly worn baseball card and flashed it at him. He was stunned to see it was a picture of himself his first year with the Sox. His first card.

"Where'd you get that?" he managed.

"Your dad. I found it on the sidewalk outside the hardware store. Rory was three. We took it inside, and he had a whole box of them." Lorelai handed the card to him, and Luke stared at himself as she poured herself a cup of coffee. "He told us to keep it. He said it would bring us luck."

"That sounds like him." He ran a finger down the front of the card before looking up at her, cradling her cup in both hands. "And has it?"

"Yeah," Lorelai said softly, her eyes dark and intense. Luke wasn't sure what she saw when she looked at him, but it was enough for her to set the untouched cup of coffee aside, frame his face between her hands, and kiss him. It felt like a scene out of a movie: the soft, dreamy kiss, the way his arm stole around her waist, and they moved almost as if they were waltzing. She was right. The universe had put all the pieces into motion for this to happen. He didn't believe in horoscopes, astrology, or all that shit. But he believed in _her_.

She pulled away, and he tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear. Silently, her hands moved to buttons of the dress shirt he wore, having never bothered to change out of his post-game clothes. She smoothed her hands over his chest, directly above his frantically beating heart, before taking the baseball card from him and setting it next to her wallet.

"Are you sure?" The words came out of her mouth, not his, and it humbled him. He knew what she was asking, and it was about far more than sex. He was letting someone in again, but he couldn't find the words to tell her that she'd already stormed her way into his heart from that very first message on his answering machine. She deserved someone who could give her the words.

"The condom in my wallet actually has a current expiration date," he admitted, and she laughed.

"I'm on the pill." She finished with his shirt, and it fluttered to the ground. "Clean as a whistle."

A doctor's visit had been the first thing he'd done after learning about Anna's duplicity. "Same."

"Definite sexy talk right there," she teased.

It was far sexier than not talking about it at all, and he told her this with another deep kiss as he found the buttons of her shirt. He wondered if she cared if his hands were shaking, because god, he couldn't get them to stop. He didn't even think he had been this nervous when he lost his virginity. Granted, that had happened in a happy alcohol-soaked haze, and he was stone-cold sober now. He nearly asked her if they could break into the inn's liquor supply, but then he parted her shirt and all the saliva in his mouth promptly dried up.

He remembered the last time they were like this, when he ached to worship her breasts but hadn't allowed himself to do so. He simply didn't care now, as his fingers teased one breast out of the cup of the pink polka-dotted bra she wore. "Do the panties match?" he murmured against her skin before laving her tongue over her nipple.

She gasped, a sharp sound that had him biting down just slightly, just enough to be rewarded with a repeat gasp that sent desire straight to his groin. "You'll have to see for yourself," she managed, grinding herself against him.

He reached for the button of her slacks at the same time her hands reached for his. They laughed as they got tangled, and he batted her hands away long enough to get her slacks open. They dropped to the ground, and she kicked them aside.

Yes, the panties matched.

He dropped to his knees, pressing his lips to the tiny ribbon that adorned them, right over her belly button. She threaded her fingers through his hair as he kissed her in a straight line from her stomach right into the heat of her. The thin fabric was damp, and he kissed right where he always imagined kissing. He hooked the cotton to one side and ran a finger down the slit before sliding it into her. He looked up to see her toss her head back with a quiet moan. He stayed like that for several precious minutes, worshipping her with his lips and fingers as she pleaded with him.

He had every intention of making her come with just his hands and mouth, but she tugged frantically at him. "Now, oh, now," she begged, all but dragging him to his feet.

The worktable was long enough for his needs, and he quickly shucked his slacks and dug the condom out of his wallet. She eyed him hungrily as she watched him.

"I get to do it next time," she informed him.

"You're likely to kill me if you do," he said.

"But, hell of a way to-" Her words cut off with a sharp gasp as he stepped between her spread legs and pressed his thumb against the very center of her once more. He rubbed in small, tight circles as she gripped the edge of the table.

His smile was lazy despite the need pulsing through his body. She hastily shed her bra as he rolled her panties down her legs, leaving her only in the knee-highs she'd worn to work. His fingers trailed up and down her calf. "These stay on," he said, his voice as hoarse as the day he told her about his past, and she dragged him onto the table with her.

He wasn't sure how it happened, but he found himself flat on his back. The miraculous part was they achieved it without falling off the table. The cool metal against his back made him shiver, but then she was straddling him, guiding him where he needed to go. His hips gave a sharp jerk, thrusting up into her, and they both gasped from the pleasure of it. She closed her eyes, and he felt her muscles flex around him. It had been so long, and there were no words for the feel of her. Had sex ever felt this way?

That was when he knew it wasn't just sex at all.

It didn't frighten him nearly as much as he expected it to.

His fingers dug into her hips as she moved over him, their eyes locked on each other as she controlled the pace. Each thrust sent him closer and closer to the edge, and he knew there was no coming back from it. There would be no long explorations of each other's bodies, no test of their endurance. Not tonight. He tried to tell her, tried to warn her. He suspected she knew as well, because her hand slid between their bodies to touch herself. Between one heartbeat and the next, he shuddered with an orgasm so intense that his vision greyed. But as the world started to clear, he felt her tighten around him as she came, her soft cries echoing through the empty room before she slumped against his chest.

He rest his hand on the small of her back, and to his horror, tears stung the back of his eyes. What the hell? He blinked them furiously away as she began to laugh against his chest.

"Lorelai?" Luke managed, suddenly terrified that he had done it all wrong.

She raised her head, locks of hair escaping from her hair tie to frame her face. "I can't believe we just did _Bull Durham_ on Sookie's worktable."

Oh hell. _Oh hell._ For the first time, he remembered where they were, and he nearly toppled her off the table. "Aw, geez."

But she clearly wasn't regretting it. There was laughter in her eyes as she pressed a kiss to his lips. Getting off the table was a bit awkward, but they managed to accomplish it without falling or awkward flailing. She moved to the sink to wet a dishcloth while he wrapped the condom in many layers of paper towels before disposing it. They found their clothes, sneaking grins at each other as they redressed. She poured out the coffee in her mug and got more from the pot before rescuing her wallet and the baseball card. He found the industrial cleaner that Sookie kept and scrubbed down the table throughly, then a second time for good measure.

Luckily, there were no irate guests waiting when they walked back into the front lobby. Lorelai went behind the front counter and frowned at her abandoned food. "Well, the burger should still be good at least," she said, then ignored it as she turned to the registration computer. She keyed in a few lines, then snagged a set of keys from a pegboard. "You've got to be exhausted. Go lay down upstairs. Room 7. Up the stairs, fourth door on the right."

Luke wanted to sit with her, to simply exist in the same space as she did. But his body chose that moment to remind him that he had been up for more than 20 hours, and exhaustion nearly staggered him. "Are you sure? I can pay for it."

She waved him away as he reached in his back pocket for his wallet. "I sometimes crash in an empty room after an overnight shift, especially if I have to be back here around lunch. Which I do. I just don't plan to sleep alone tonight."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Got any issues with that?"

"None." Luke kissed her on the lips, then her nose. It wrinkled, which made him smile.

"Oh," Lorelai said casually as he headed for the stairs, "if you're naked and spread-eagled, I wouldn't mind that at all."

"I'll keep your suggestions in mind," he replied and grinned all the way upstairs.

* * *

Lorelai pounced on Sookie almost the moment she walked in the door an hour and a half later.

"Whoa, what is with you?" Sookie asked as Lorelai all but danced around her as she followed Sookie into the kitchen. "Have you been doing something slutty?"

She grinned. "As a matter of fact-"

But Sookie's attention had turned to the coffee maker, where they had left the coffee and spices out. The machine was still on, the pot mostly empty. "Who's been in my kitchen?"

Oops. "It was just coffee, Sook."

Sookie threw her hands in the air as she frantically looked over the bottles. "And spices! Someone's been messing with my spices!"

"I know! I let him!"

Sookie placed her hands on her hips. "I have a specific organization system to my spices!"

Right, right. Next time, make sure to put everything back where Sookie left it. Lorelai blamed sex brain for it. "I know, and you can put them away, but Sookie …"

"I don't care who you let in here, Lorelai, he can't just go riffling through my spices," Sookie huffed as she snatched the bottles to put them away. Then she spun around so fast that Lorelai had to back up quickly to keep Sookie from running over her. "Him? _Him_?"

Lorelai just grinned.

"You mean Butch…?"

"Luke," she corrected. For some reason, it didn't sound right for anyone else in town to call him that.

Sookie studied her closely, then dropped the spices back on the counter. One bottle rolled off, landing on the floor with a crack. "Oh my god. Oh god, you two had sex."

"Not just sex." Lorelai's gaze slid over to the worktable. She wondered if Sookie would allow her steal it and bronze it.

Sookie stared at the table as well, and it didn't take her long to put two and two together. She gasped. "No!"

"Yes!"

Sookie gaped at her. "You went _Bull Durham_ on my worktable?"

"Luke cleaned and sanitized it after, I swear!"

Sookie reverently laid a hand on it. "You have seen wonders," she informed the table, and she was not wrong. "Where is he now?"

"Upstairs waiting for the end of my shift."

Sookie eyed the table critically. "Damn, can he come teach my sous chefs how to clean? I don't think this worktable has ever looked this good."

"It's the afterglow," Lorelai said from her position of great knowledge. She would never be able to walk in this kitchen again without seeing that table and knowing what happened. Her toes curled. Her shoes were still abandoned somewhere. Probably under the worktable.

"I'll say. How was it?" Sookie asked as Lorelai dropped to her knees. There they were. She hooked the flats with two fingers and rocked back on her heels. The smile she gave Sookie was bashful, almost shy. She couldn't think of the words to describe what had happened.

Sookie's answering smile spoke volumes. "That good?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, I'm so happy for you!" Sookie helped Lorelai to her feet before pulling her into a hug. "I mean, all the phone calls, and you two spending so much time together, and that pizza he shipped, and really you just look like you're a pair."

"You're not mad I didn't talk to you before now?"

Sookie tut-tutted a bit. "Honey, I hate to tell you, but you've been difficult to live with for the past couple of weeks. I figured you'd talk to me when you were ready." She frowned, studying Lorelai's face slowly. "Is everything OK? What does Rory think?"

"She knows something's up. I think she'll be OK with it." Well, she was pretty confident Rory would be OK with it. The last time she had attempted at a serious relationship was some time around Clinton's second inauguration, and that failed spectacularly once the guy realized that Lorelai wouldn't just ship Rory off at a whim. She would need to talk over everything with Rory as soon as possible. But first, Mommy was going to be selfish and sleep with a really hot guy.

There was a huge plus in his favor: Luke seemed to genuinely like Rory and accepted them as a package. Helping to raise his nephew? Big brownie points in her book. He didn't take one look at her as a single mom and run in the other direction or try to use Rory as a means of picking her up, which was far more distasteful. Still, Rory only had roughly four more years of living at home before spreading her wings and flying off into the adult world. Lorelai was only 31. She had the rest of her life to consider.

Lorelai found herself hovering just inside the room a couple hours later, after tiredly turning everything over to Michel and grabbing her overnight bag from her office. Oh god. Oh god, this was big. She knew it would be big. She knew what she would be throwing herself into, especially after hearing about the whole Anna fiasco. It would be all too easy just to leave a note, slip out, and flee to the Crap Shack.

Instead, she watched Luke sleep. He had kicked back the covers enough to see that he had stripped down to a worn grey T-shirt and boxers, the latter of which had to be some sort of prank gift if the ducks meant anything. His chest rose and fell softly in sleep, barely snoring. He also kept politely to one side of the bed, which would make crawling in a lot easier.

She couldn't remember ever sharing a bed with a man for longer than it took to have sex.

"Oh Rory," Lorelai whispered. "Mommy's in big, big trouble."

She slipped into the bathroom, scrubbed off her makeup, and changed into pajamas. She wasn't going to run. It was a mantra she kept hammering into her head, like a bad song on repeat. That and "Caribbean Queen" were stuck in her brain, which made for some very strange thoughts. She spent far too long staring in the mirror, psyching herself up. There may have been some bad pep talks from _Coach_ involved.

Still, she only got as far as the bed, nervously hopping from foot to foot as she stared at the empty space. She lingered long enough that his eyes blinked open.

"You OK?" Luke murmured sleepily.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. Fine." _Ish._

"C'mere." He pulled back the covers on her side of the bed, and she nearly leaped out of her skin.

For some reason, that invitation felt more exposing than the truly spectacular orgasm she had just hours earlier. What if he had morning breath? What if _she_ had morning breath? Was he a cuddler? Did she even like to be cuddled? Maybe? Shouldn't she had figured all this out before embarking on life-changing relationship with hot baseball guy?

"I've never done this before," Lorelai blurted. "Slept with a guy. Like, really sleep with one. Sleep, sleep, not just sex and run. I mean, I've shared a bed before. But sharing with Rory when she was little is a lot different than sleeping with a guy and I'm not sure I can." She wrung her hands. "Maybe I should sleep in the chair."

Luke's eyes warmed. "C'mere," he repeated, his voice dropping an octave. Oh god, did sex have a voice? If so, she was listening to it. Her body swayed toward him automatically, and she found herself slipping under the covers. She clasped her hands over her stomach and stared at him as he absently toyed with the ends of her hair.

"It's OK," he soothed and wrapped his arm around her. "Is this all right?"

Lorelai expected to feel suffocated. Instead, she felt … safe. Safe and cherished. She couldn't think of a time she ever felt cherished. At the most, she felt like people tolerated her. Even liked her from time to time. Except for her parents, who tended to vacillate between treating her like a distant relative or bearer of the plague. She was loved, of course. Sookie and Mia and Rory all loved her. But cherished? That seemed as foreign a concept as sleeping with a guy, and look what she was doing now.

She inched closer until her ear was against Luke's chest and he was rubbing her back. She closed her eyes and thought it would be nice to stay like this for a few minutes before rolling away and figuring out how to sleep.

Lorelai slept tucked up against him for the next four hours.


	11. Chapter 10

"So, what're you wearing?"

"We're not going there."

"Again."

"Lorelai."

"You're still upset I talked you into phone sex."

"You could talk me into running through LA wearing nothing but a paper bag." The words were muttered, but they were enough for Lorelai to grin into the phone. "I know whatever it is you're wearing, it involves the boxers you stole from me three days ago."

Lorelai pressed a hand to her chest. "They do not!" She wiggled her toes and look down at the sleeping outfit she wore: faded T-shirt and the duck boxers she swiped from Luke when he had been in the shower at the Independence Inn. It had been small compensation for the fact there had just been the one condom and they had slept past the alarm, thus barring any repeat performance of their _Bull Durham_ activities.

Well, except the aforementioned phone sex, but one of Lorelai's favorite pastimes was needling Luke beyond his control. Usually it manifested in the form of a rant, but the previous night … she sank down into the couch as the erotic memories resurfaced for the umpteenth time that day. She squeezed her thighs together. She was sorely tempted to tease him into a repeat, but Rory was due home any minute.

How her life had changed in less than two months.

"You haven't managed to figure out how to ship those animal-style fries from In 'N Out yet, have you?" Lorelai asked, absently toying with the hem of the boxers. She'd had to adjust the waistband a bit so they would fit her, but it wasn't like she was actually going to give the boxers back.

"No, so stop asking."

She could almost hear Luke grumping on his end of the line, and her heart did that funny little tap dance she associated with him.

"Look," he said, "I know a guy out here who can at least get me the recipe, and I'll make 'em for you when I get back."

Her jaw dropped. " _Really_? I love you!"

"Can you even begin to fathom what it'll do to your arteries?" Luke demanded, then suddenly sucked in a deep breath as if her words had suddenly registered. That clearly had to be the case, because it just hit her with a force of a cartoon anvil. Whoa. Wow. She slowly sat up, all sense of teasing joy suddenly gone.

"Lorelai," he started to say, and thankfully fate intervened by the front door opening.

"Oh, Rory's home, I need to talk to her. You have a game to get to mister, so chop chop!" Lorelai hastily turned the phone off, then shoved it in the cushions for good measure as Rory frowned at her.

"What gives?"

"Nothing!" Lorelai said, all-too brightly.

"The vibrating couch cushions say otherwise."

"I keep telling the couch to be quiet, but it doesn't listen." Lorelai dug the phone out, flipped it over, and removed the battery pack. "See?"

"Uh huh." Rory narrowed her eyes. "Mom, you've been acting stranger than normal lately."

Oh boy. Ohhhh boy. Was it time? Apparently it was, because she just told their baseball card guy that she loved him, and even though she wasn't really paying attention during ohshitisaidathing, she probably actually meant it. Which meant she had to bring Rory into the loop fast, because oh god, she was in love. It was only making her feel slightly queasy.

Right. Chugging Pepto Bismol, then talking with Rory.

Rory held up the bag of Al's she'd brought with her. "Food and chatting, mister. Now."

"Did you get the sweet and sour pork?" Lorelai asked, dragging her feet as she followed Rory into the kitchen.

"Yes, but I'm giving you moo goo gai pan if you don't sit and talk." Rory pointed to a chair, and Lorelai dropped into it as Rory untied the bag and started pulling out various containers. She grabbed the sweet and sour pork, along with the sauce, before it could be claimed by the younger generation. Hard talks required fried food.

Rory simply pulled out a second container of it, knowing her mother all too well. "Is everything OK?"

"Peachy." Lorelai grabbed chopsticks and absently jabbed at the pieces of meat.

"You have the same look on your face you did the day my caterpillar died. And the hamster. And the beta fish. And Luke's dad."

Surprised, Lorelai looked up from where she was tearing the fried breading off a piece of pork. "You remember that?"

Rory drizzled sauce over her pork. "Kind of hard to forget. No one ever died around me before Mr. Bill."

Lorelai popped a piece of pork in her mouth and waited for Rory to take a couple bites of her own food. "So, about Luke …"

"I'm OK with it," Rory said, addressing her dinner more than her mother.

"With what?"

Rory narrowed her eyes at Lorelai. "You dating him."

Lorelai gaped at her. "Way to take the wind out of my sails, kid! How'd you know?"

Rory shrugged. "You've been acting funny over the past few days, ever since that night you filled in for Tobin. And you started locking your door the past couple of nights." She swirled her own chopsticks around in her container. "You've never locked your door before."

"Oh, kid." The thought that Rory had come upstairs looking for her to find the door locked made guilt twist in Lorelai's gut. "I'll leave it unlocked."

"You don't have to," Rory said hastily. "I'll get used to it."

"No, no, you shouldn't have to get used to it. We're a team, you and me. Abbott and Costello. Laverne and Shirley."

"Mom." Rory rolled her eyes at her. "I'm 14, not 4. I get that when you're in a relationship, sometimes you need to lock the door."

It was one of those moments where Lorelai felt that Rory was the parent and not herself. She withstood the urge to hunch her shoulders and sink down in her chair. But she wanted to be straight with her kid about sex. She wanted Rory comfortable with her own sexuality. Not long after Rory had turned 12, as part of the sex talk, Lorelai had discussed privacy and locking the door if needed. Well, funny how the tables turned.

She put her container of sweet and sour pork on the table, no longer hungry. "I've never had boys over before, you know that. All-girl clubhouse, that's us. You realize that's going to change."

Rory simply helped herself to Lorelai's remaining food. "Well, it's good I grew out of that nudist phase I went through when I was three."

Ah yes. Tiny Rory streaking through the front lobby of the Independence Inn much to the horror of a good bit of their guests, plus the new bellhop named Michel, was one of Lorelai's favorite memories. Right, right, she was being distracted. Back to the issue at hand.

"I mean it," Lorelai told her. "I want to know if you're not comfortable with this."

"Mom, I like Luke."

"And he likes us. I mean it," she added when Rory took an avid interest in her stolen food. "He likes you, and he understand you and me go together. Just like him, his sister, and his nephew go together." She had told Rory a very abbreviated version of the Anna story. "He _gets_ it."

"Mom, you don't need to convince me."

"The look on your face tells me you need convincing."

Rory put her own food down. "You know that book I was reading the day you went to Boston? _Franny & Zooey_?"

"Yeah?"

"Luke sent it to me."

Lorelai did a double take. "He _what_?"

"I got the package in the mail while you two were being all strange after the interviews. There were a few books in it. Luke wrote he got them for his nephew and thought I would like them too." Rory's eyes lit up. "One of them's that newly discovered Hemingway, Mom! Anyhow, he apologized for his outburst in front of me and Lane, and he had a few CDs in there for her. He heard us talking about music."

Oh hell, Lorelai thought. If she hadn't been in love with him before, she was a goner now.

"I knew it wasn't an act or anything." Rory fidgeted with her chopstick. "When Dad sends me something, he always mentions you in the note. Like 'make sure your mom sees this' sort of thing. But Luke didn't. He just wrote about the books and Lane and said be careful where we hid the CDs from Mrs. Kim. Nothing about you at all. It was nice."

It wasn't just nice. He'd done it when they'd barely been speaking, which meant … god, he really _did_ care for Rory. Lorelai found herself blinking back tears.

"And um … I may have written him back. You know, thanking him. That was very important you know."

"Yeah." She wasn't going to cry. _She wasn't going to cry_.

Rory pulled her purse around from where she hung it over the back of the chair and pulled out a couple postcards. "So, Luke sent me a few postcards. This one's from Toronto. And this one's from Detroit."

All the away games he had attended the weeks they had danced around each other. Crap, crap, crap, _crap_. Lorelai grabbed a napkin and pressed it to her eyes.

"Mom?"

"I'm OK, kid. I'm really OK."

Lorelai pushed out of her seat, wrapping Rory in the tightest hug she could muster. It was one of those far-fetched dreams she hoarded in the years she and Rory spent living in the potter's shed. She never actually thought someone would accept both her and Rory into their lives. Rory's own father at best treated her like a toy he took off the shelf to play with every so often, putting it back once he got bored. She pressed a kiss to the side of Rory's head and went back in the living room to put the battery back in the phone.

When the phone rang four hours later, she was laying in bed, clutching it to her chest. She quickly checked the caller ID and recognized the Anaheim phone number Luke had called from earlier and answered. When he said her name, the fist around her heart loosened a bit.

"Look," Lorelai quickly said before he could get in a word. "I'm sorry I freaked out and hung up on you and took the battery out of the phone and hid from you for the past few hours. This is just big, you know? Not just for you, but for me too. But I know especially with the Anna thing that it's really hard, and I get it. I mean, I haven't told you that much about Rory's dad, but let's just say I understand. But I want you to know that I mean it. I love you. And I know you're probably scared, because I sure the hell am. I've only told one other person in my life this, and she's downstairs trying to decide which of the six Stars Hollow postcards she's going to mail you. So it's not just a casual thing with me. I didn't mean to say it the way I did, but it doesn't change the fact that I feel this way about you. So, I'm going to hang up on you now, because I know what you're going to say, and I don't think I can handle it at the moment. But I know you'll be back in a few days, and I want you to keep safe. Night."

She turned the phone off and popped the battery pack back out before setting it on the pillow next to her. She spent the rest of the night tucking the exposed part of her heart back where it belonged.

* * *

"Wow," Sookie said as Lorelai pushed hangers of uniform skirts from one side of the rack to the other. School started for Rory in just a few weeks, and she needed the time to make sure the ridiculously expensive clothes fit. "You actually told Luke that?"

"Yup."

"And then you hung up on him?"

Lorelai pulled one skirt off and eyed it critically. "Yup."

Sookie sighed. "Oh, sweetie. You should give him a chance to respond."

"I know what he's going to say, Sook." Deciding the skirt wouldn't do, Lorelai put it back and selected another. "He wouldn't say anything. Or worse, he would just get mad at me for pulling this sort of thing. We've only known each other two months. Can you blame him? You know what happened with Anna."

"Yeah, and Anna's not you. He didn't have hot _Bull Durham_ sex with Anna in my kitchen." Sookie pressed a hand to her stomach. "Just saying that makes me feel sick."

The thought of Luke and Anna being intimate made Lorelai want to vomit as well. "He ran away the first time we even tried something. He needs the space to work this out."

"He does or you do?"

"I've got it," Lorelai told Sookie. "What?" she asked when her friend winged an eyebrow at her.

"Sweetie," Sookie said gently.

"I've got it!" Lorelai repeated, not sure if she was trying to convince Sookie or herself. She draped the skirt over an arm. "I think." She started the hunt for a second skirt. "Is two months too soon?"

"I knew we were gonna be friends the moment I met you," Sookie said. "You had Rory sneaking cookies for the two of you from Pierre, remember? He hated _everyone,_ but he couldn't say no to Rory's big eyes. You wound three, and you gave one to me because Pierre had just yelled at me for ruining the creme brûlée that was dessert that night. So we hid in the pantry and ate them."

Lorelai smiled at the memory. They hadn't just hidden in the pantry. They had squeezed themselves onto the bottom shelf of one of the food storage racks, where Rory loved to play with her My Little Pony dolls and her Hug-A-World. Most of Rory's childhood toys had come from the Independence Inn's lost and found. She draped the second skirt over her arm and glanced around the store to see where the uniform blouses were. Then froze when her mother walked in the door.

"Oh shit," Lorelai whispered, quickly searching for a way out as Emily approached one of the sales clerks.

"What?" Sookie glanced in the same direction as Lorelai and let out a hiss. "Oh shit. Shit, shit, _shit_! That's your mother, isn't it?"

"The Wicked Witch of the East in all her glory." Lorelai grabbed Sookie's arm and took several giant steps back. The store wasn't tiny, tiny, but there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver. Other than dropping the armload of clothing and fleeing outright, the only place of sanctuary was the dressing rooms. But reaching them required walking past where Emily and the clerk were talking.

The only thing remotely in Lorelai's favor was the section of the store she was in. Pretty much all of the money she had earned from managing Luke's property went toward Rory's tuition, her books, and the new computer. There was some left, but she didn't want to blow through all of it right away. So, she decided to make over some secondhand uniforms. Some things, like the white shirts, socks, and tie, had to be purchased new. The heavy skirts and blazer, by far the most expensive pieces of Rory's uniform, could be altered to fit her. Emily Gilmore wouldn't dare buy secondhand clothing.

"What do we do?" Sookie whispered as Lorelai all but pressed them against the wall.

"Try to figure out why she's here, wait until her back's turned, and make a run for it." Hopefully, they would allow her back in the store. It was the only authorized place in Hartford to purchase Rory's uniform.

"Isn't it obvious? She's here for the same reason you are."

Lorelai blinked at Sookie, then peered around the corner. Sure enough, the clerk had led Emily to the section of new uniforms for Chilton, pulling item after item off the rack. Anger rolled through her, quick as the tornado that had swept Dorothy's house away. Oh no. Oh, _hell no_. Straightening her shoulders, she marched out from her area of the store.

"Lorelai?" Sookie whispered. "Oh, Lorelai. Don't do this. Lorelai!" But Lorelai was already across the store, approaching them.

"And these are her measurements, though they are a bit out of date," Emily was saying to the clerk, handing over a piece of paper. "I'm sure you will tailor them to fit once we get updated ones."

"Yes, Mrs. Gilmore."

"No," Lorelai said. "You won't."

If her mother was startled by her presence, she didn't show it. She merely peered around the clerk and frowned at Lorelai.

"Thank you, I've got this," Lorelai told the clerk.

"I um …," the clerk stammered, staring from Lorelai to Emily and back.

"I'll let you know when I'm ready to check out. Those sizes, please," Emily told the clerk, dismissing her. "Lorelai, what on earth are you doing?"

"What am _I_ doing? I'm buying Rory's uniforms. You know, I figured I'd actually send her to school dressed in clothes this year since the Fred Flintstone look is out. What are _you_ doing?"

"I'm making sure Rory looks acceptable when she begins at Chilton." Emily sniffed at the secondhand skirts draped over Lorelai's arm. "Since you won't accept money from us, your father and I are helping Rory in this way."

"Thank you," Lorelai said through gritted teeth, "but we don't need your help at all. I've got this."

"Really? If you have this, as you say, then perhaps you would like to share where you got the money to pay for Rory's school."

"I've got this, Mom," Lorelai repeated, enunciating every word clearly. "Thank you for the offer, but I can take care of Chilton on my own."

"There is no way someone of your salary range can afford Chilton. Did you take out a second mortgage on the house?"

Lorelai struggled to keep her voice down. "No! I haven't taken out a second mortgage. What part of none of your business did you not hear?"

Her mother, though, didn't seem to care. That's how Lorelai knew she was rattled. Appearances were everything to Emily Gilmore. "It is my business when you're pulling a potentially risky move that could potentially put Rory's safety in jeopardy. I stood aside when you left 13 years ago, and I won't do it again! Did you take a loan from that Mia lady then?"

"We're not talking about this!"

Emily paled. "Lorelai, you haven't done anything … you wouldn't …"

"Wouldn't what, Mom?" Lorelai tossed snidely at her. "Sell drugs? Turn tricks to get Rory into Harvard via Chilton? How could you possibly think that?"

Emily scowled. "How do you even think of these things, Lorelai?"

"Well, you sure as hell were thinking of them!"

"Oh boy," Sookie whispered as everyone else in the shop made no attempt to disguise their interest in the fight between the Gilmore women. She gently tapped Lorelai's arm. "Sweetie, we should go."

"I'm not going. I'm not letting my mother drive me out of this shop." Lorelai turned her back on Emily and approached the counter. She almost threw the skirts on them, but made herself set them down gently. "That stack, please," she told the clerk, indicating where a blazer and cardigan had already been set aside, along with shirts, ties, and socks.

"Lorelai," Emily said at her shoulder as Lorelai pulled out her credit card. She prayed to every deity out there that it would go through, because the last thing she needed was a decline as her mother was standing there. "Rory wouldn't even be in Chilton if it wasn't for me and your father."

"Is that a fact?" Lorelai's nerves settled slightly as the purchase was approved.

"You know once we found out Rory applied that the headmaster let her in as a favor to us."

"Did you ever imagine that Rory got herself in? She aced every single test they put in front of her, plus all the interviews! Rory is a brilliant kid, Mom." Lorelai hastily scribbled her name across the receipt and took the bag from the clerk. She whirled around, nearly bowling Emily over. "Rory got herself into Chilton."

"Rory got into Chilton through good grades and her Gilmore name," Emily said stiffly. "No matter how much she excels, she comes from a school in the middle of nowhere."

"This is Connecticut, not _Little House on the Prairie._ Contrary to popular belief, Stars Hollow Middle School isn't a one-room schoolhouse."

"Don't use that tone of voice with me, Lorelai Victoria Gilmore," Emily shot at her.

Lorelai's back went poker straight. "I will use whatever voice I want. I have been out of your house for 13 years, and you will not treat me this way in front of my friend and these people, who I am sure are the parents of Rory's future classmates. And isn't her first day at school going to be happy, fun, sunshine now? Until you realize that, Rory and I won't be back. No holidays. No birthdays. It's like we never existed. Maybe you would be happier if we didn't." Lorelai brushed past Emily, her head held high as she strode out the front door.

She made it all the way to the parking garage before she began shaking. She had the car door open by the time the tears escaped. She flung the bag into the back seat and rested her head on the steering wheel, leaving the driver's side door open. Sookie slid into the passenger seat, rubbing Lorelai's back until she was able to start the car and make their way back toward Stars Hollow.

* * *

Rory shouldered her backpack as she pulled the front door close behind her. She kept it quiet, because her mom had crashed on the couch following another night shift. At least this time she had the day off. She needed the rest.

Her mother had come back from Hartford with her school uniforms and was strangely quiet for a good chunk of the afternoon until she pulled out the uniform pieces and had Rory try them on so she could note where alterations needed to be made. Rory knew Lorelai had bought part of her uniform secondhand, and she was perfectly fine with it. She didn't really care if her uniform was new or not. It wasn't like there was a huge difference or anything, plus her mom was a whiz at making old clothes look cute. But she swore her mother had been crying at one point, and part of her wondered if she had run into her grandparents in Hartford. Lorelai only looked like that after their visits to see Grandma and Grandpa.

But her mom said nothing, and neither did Sookie when Rory crashed at her house so Lorelai could fill in for Tobin again. She decided to bring it up later, just to make sure everything was OK. Still, she gave her mother an extra long hug, just because she felt like she needed it.

Rory was halfway to the sidewalk when a taxi swung to the curb in front of the Crap Shack. Brow furrowed, she waited as the door open. A grin split from ear to ear once the passenger climbed out.

Well, if she couldn't make her mom feel better, maybe Luke could.

"Hey!" she said as he shouldered a duffel bag and headed toward her.

"Hey. Your mom home?"

Rory frowned. Luke had the same sort of tired, stressed look her mom had upon returning from Hartford the day before. She chalked it up to his job. "Yeah, she's sacked out on the couch. She was filling in for Tobin again. Front door's unlocked. Just go on in." Rory made a mental note to make her library visit go as long as possible. Like she needed an excuse to stay at the library.

"Thanks." He gave her shoulder a squeeze as he walked by.

Rory fidgeted with the strap on her backpack. "Hey, Luke?"

"Yeah?" He glanced over his shoulder.

"I just want you to know. You and Mom? I'm OK with it."

She thought she saw some of the tension leave his shoulders, but it could also just be that he was no longer crammed into a taxi. "You sure?"

"You make Mom really happy."

He turned fully toward her. "It's not just about your mom. It's you, too."

Wow, the ground was suddenly very interesting. Maybe one day they could actually make a walk that led up to the door. "Mom gave up a lot for me. But I wouldn't be who I am now without her. Sometimes though, I think she's lonely. She'd never tell me about it. I don't think she even realizes I see it." Rory pinned Luke with her sternest expression, which really wasn't that stern. Lane said she needed a lot of practice in that area. "I just don't want Mom to be happy then for you to disappear."

"I'm not disappearing."

Her stomach jittered just a bit. "Promise?"

"Yeah." His smile was warm and reassuring, and it didn't feel the same as the ones her dad gave her when he promised the same thing. Rory had a feeling Luke actually meant what he said.

"Good. Right. OK. Go talk to Mom. And lock the door after you." Rory winked at him and headed toward the library.

* * *

When the door closed after Rory, Lorelai blinked her eyes open and stared at the ceiling. She wanted to sleep. She craved sleep. Tobin calling out hadn't been planned, so she was going on roughly 26 hours with no sleep. No sleep, a hideous encounter with her mother, and a country-deafening silence from Luke. There had been nothing from him since that disastrous phone call the night before last, and she wondered if she had lost him completely. She wasn't exactly shocked. Her mouth had been doing quite a lot of damage lately.

A tear streamed down her cheek, and she didn't bother to brush it away. Her breath hitched, and more leaked out. Damn it, _damn it_. She squeezed her eyes back shut as the door opened again. Rory probably forgot something. Hopefully, she wouldn't look toward the couch. She barely heard the click of the door locking and frowned. They never locked the door. Her eyes popped open at the sound of a succinct swear, and she turned her head. "Luke?" she gaped.

He stood over her, his face exhausted and furious. He flung his arms out, dropping the duffel bag he held in the process. "How the hell am I supposed to yell if you're looking like _that_?"

Lorelai glanced down at herself. T-shirt and duck boxers, same as the past few nights, all topped by the afghan she was snuggled into. "You're not in Kansas City."

"You're right. I'm not in Kansas City! And you wanna know why I'm not in Kansas City?" he demanded as she swung into a sitting position, pushing the afghan aside.

Fear gripped her for a moment. "Did something happen with Liz and Jess?"

He just stared at her, but that fury eased slightly. "No, they're all right."

"Are you hurt?"

It was like flipping a light switch. Luke flung his arms out again, anger intact. "Do I _look_ hurt?"

"No …" Lorelai racked her brain. "Did Taylor finally send that hit mob after you?"

"No!"

She squinted at him. He was wearing the clothes the team required he travel in: sport jacket, collared shirt, and slacks. A streak of yellow ran down the front of the shirt. "Is that mustard on your shirt?"

"What?" Luke looked down at himself, then plucked at the stain. "Yes, that's mustard! You wanna know why there's mustard on my shirt?"

"Because you ate on a plane?"

"Exactly!" Luke jabbed a finger at the mustard. "I ate on a plane. I _hate_ eating on planes! The food tastes like cardboard because your taste buds are all messed up!"

For the first time since going to Hartford, Lorelai felt like laughing. "OK, Mr. Wizard."

"And do you wanna know why I was eating on a plane? Because you hung up on me!"

The laughter died in her throat. "Excuse me?"

"I know you heard me."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you." Lorelai thought about getting to her feet, but she wasn't quite sure her legs could hold her. "So let me get this straight. You took off work and flew from California to Connecticut when you're supposed to be in Missouri because I hung up on you!"

"What did you expect me to do? You throw something like that in my face, and you don't even give me a chance to respond!"

"I panicked." And now he was here to end it. _Of course_. It was the perfect ending to the disaster that was the past 24 hours.

Luke paced in front of the coffee table, gesticulating as he ranted. "Look, I know you're scared. How'd you think I feel? I earned that right to respond, Lorelai. Everything that's happened in the past few years? I was jerked around like a puppet on a broken string for long enough because Anna pulled the same sort of thing! She'd call, she'd yell at me for something I did wrong, and then she'd hang up before I had a chance to even process it." He whipped toward Lorelai, pointing at her. "You and me, we are not doing this! You aren't going to say something and just walk away without giving me a chance to say something back. If we're going to do this thing, we're going to have a rational discussion like adults! You're not gonna tell me that you love me without giving me the chance to say I love you right back! And we're going to go upstairs so I can show you how much I do!"

She felt like laughing and crying at the same time as he tugged her to her feet. "OK," she managed just as he kissed her.

It took a moment for it to really register. He had just been yelling at her, and with good reason, and now he was kissing her like he needed her more than his next breath of air. Because he loved her. Oh god. _He loved her_. She loved him and he loved her, and she wanted to be terrified, but he was too busy melting all her bones in a single heart-stopping kiss.

Lorelai's breath hitched as Luke ran his thumb over her cheek, brushing away the tear that escaped. "Don't cry."

She shook her head. Her insides were like a mass of Jell-O, and she didn't think she could say a word without completely losing it. It wasn't just this. It was her mother and Chilton and everything just happening all at once. He pulled her to him, his hand splayed in her hair as she pressed her face into his shoulder. Tears went with mustard stains, right?

"I shouldn't yell at you like that," he murmured. "I'm sorry."

"No, no," she managed, his jacket muffling her voice. "I shouldn't hang up on you. I'm sorry, too."

The next kiss was soothing, a promise and an affirmation of the words they had blurted to each other. Lorelai decided to try them out again. "I really do. Love you that is. Maybe one day I can say it without feeling like I ate an entire serving of Al's cannoli."

Luke knew enough about Al's to flinch. "Didn't you say that gave you food poisoning?"

"Sssh, we ignore that part." She started to pull him toward the stairs.

They were at the top of the landing when Luke tugged her to a stop. "I do too. I love you." He gave her that smile of his that was guaranteed to ruin her panties. "And I didn't eat the cannoli."

Lorelai was laughing as he backed her into the bedroom.

* * *

 _Editor's note: Much love and thanks to JumpingCattleHockey and no-jam-hands for reassuring me that I wasn't going in the wrong direction at several points in this chapter. A word of warning: I am going to be traveling a lot over the next month and will be posting when I can. Please be assured that if there's radio silence for a bit that I haven't abandoned the story. If you happen to be going to Flame Con or DragonCon, I will be in artist alley at both places with my comic! Please feel free to drop by!_


	12. Chapter 11

_Author's note: OK, gang, like chapter 9, you do not want to be reading this chapter at work or in public. Do so at your own risk!_

* * *

Luke's body clock was well and truly screwed.

He never quite got it back on track after that night at the Independence Inn, when he wound up sleeping well past the alarm clock. It had been a race to get back to Boston in time for the team flight to Anaheim without being penalized. It had been worth it.

Then the self-censoring switch had failed on Lorelai's end, and the resulting 36 hours had been close to a nightmare.

He stared at the ceiling, frowning at the small cracks that needed patching. He really needed to bring his toolbox on his next trip here. He absently played with the ends of her hair as she snuggled close to him in sleep. He'd spent the better part of the time being furious at her for dropping the words, even though he knew from the very start that this wasn't casual. He didn't think he could do casual, not anymore. He had stormed out of the hotel, hailed a cab … and had wound up in front of Anna's.

He had stood there for a long time, hands in his pockets as he stared at that house. Lorelai knew pretty much all of the story. Luke hadn't elaborated on why Anna had been so determined to latch onto him, and it had everything to do with his wallet. His father's illness had kept him from fully getting sucked into the party culture surrounding his career, and he took his dad's words wisely. He had invested his money well and there was more than enough for him, Liz, and Jess to live on for the rest of their lives. He could even take on Lorelai and Rory without an issue. Anna had known this. He suspected she had him investigated before informing him that he won the daddy lottery.

Luke had no desire to see Anna or speak with her ever again. Oh, but he had a parting shot. A nice, healthy form of revenge that would kick in the day that April Nardini turned 18. That would be the day a certified letter would be delivered from his lawyer informing April of the trust fund he had set up in her name. It would be enough for her to go to any college she chose and establish her own home after, and his lawyer would be the overseer of the fund. One of the terms of the trust was that none of it could ever be signed over to Anna. What glimpses he had seen of the girl though magazine articles unwittingly shoved in his face confirmed his suspicions. The child was cute, but he had never seen a more miserable expression on a kid's face. The trust would offer her a chance at freedom.

He thought of the camaraderie between Lorelai and Rory. Lorelai had given up everything for her daughter, to keep her from being trapped in a lifestyle where she had plenty of money but few choices to express herself. And it had been as simple as that. He knew what his response to Lorelai's declaration would be. His thoughts were full of Gilmores, and his heart was in Stars Hollow, safely tucked away in a ramshackle little house with a battered Nissan out front.

He hailed a second taxi and went back to the hotel long enough to pack and wheedle his way into a day off, citing an issue with his father's estate. Then he had taken the last flight out of the Los Angeles area toward Hartford.

Luke looked down at the sleeping woman curled on her side facing him, still not used to sharing her bed with someone that wasn't her daughter. Her hair hung in her face, and he gently brushed back the locks. He hadn't planned what he was going to say, and his own admission of love had caught him just as off guard as he imagined hers had. He wasn't even sure he felt for Rachel what he was feeling now. It felt like his heart had grown too big for his chest, and surely he was going to wake up any second now.

Instead, Lorelai's eyes blinked open, and her smile made his chest squeeze with the love that was so new that it felt like a strange sort of heart attack.

"Hey," she whispered in a voice husky with sleep.

"Hey." His fingers trailed down to her cheek to stroke the soft skin there.

"At first, I thought William Holden was in my bed, but you're better."

His brow furrowed. "William Holden?"

She laughed. "Yeah. Rory and I watched _Sunset Boulevard_ the other night, and he was pretty hot in it. You know who William Holden is, right?"

Luke at least knew _Sunset Boulevard_ was a movie. He got points for that, right? "Vaguely."

Lorelai smirked. "Not a movie guy."

"Not really," he confessed.

"Well, mister, we're just going to have to improve your education. Consider yourself officially invited to the next Gilmore Movie Night. All I need you to do is agree to the rules and sign a contract in blood, and you'll be set."

"I'll consider the contract."

"I'm up for negotiation in that area."

Luke leaned in then, resting his mouth on hers in a slow, gentle kiss that made Lorelai move her legs restlessly against him. He deepened it, wrapping his arm around her and caressing her back with long, smooth strokes. "OK, consider the contract forfeited," she managed once he pulled away.

"Thank you."

She snuggled into him, absently tracing circles over his pecs. "This is nice. You. Me. Naked in a bed. We should do this more often."

"I plan on it." Luke looked down at the top of her head. She was staring intensely at one of his nipples, and he wasn't sure if he should be worried or aroused. "What's going on in there?"

"You really do love me?" Lorelai's voice held none of the bravado that he had seen from her in all the time he had known her.

"I wouldn't say it unless I didn't mean it." He waited for her to meet his gaze, and when she didn't, he rubbed her back again. It was comforting to know that he wasn't the only one completely out of his league when it came to this. "There's not a lot of people I care about. Liz and Jess. My manager and his wife. Now you and Rory. Are you scared?"

She didn't say anything at first. She rolled away from him, the sheet falling to her waist. She clasped her hands over her stomach. "I saw my mother yesterday."

Luke pushed himself into a sitting position so he could look down at her. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes filled with something that made him want to protect her from the world. "She upset you," he guessed.

Lorelai turned her head toward him. "How much did Mia tell you about me?"

"Just that you were 16 when you had Rory and ran off with her a year later. You wound up in Stars Hollow working as a maid. And she's very protective of both of you."

She sat up as well, pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts. "My mother believes that until you're an adult, you don't have the capacity to make your own decisions. There's something wrong with everyone you hang out with. You're not allowed to make mistakes, and when you do, it's because you didn't sign your independence and everything that's unique about you over to them. She believed that as a parent, you determine everything about your child from the clothes they wear to the books they read to the people they hang out with. You do whatever it takes to keep your child in the lines they draw for you, because while you're young, all of your choices are ridiculous."

Her gaze fell on a framed photo on the dresser, one of herself with a toddler-aged Rory. "I left because I could see her starting to do this with Rory. I didn't want that life for her."

Lorelai played with the edge of the sheet. "I don't have very many people in my life who are in my life permanently forever. They will always be there for me. I will always be there for them, you know? There's Rory, and Sookie, and this town and ... I mean, at least I think I've got …" Now, she looked at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

Luke took her hand, lacing their fingers together. "You do."

"OK. OK, good." She stared at their joint hands, then took a deep shuddering breath. "So, how did you manage to pull off this detour?"

And the moment was over. Luke filed it away in the corner of his mind to mull over during his flight back to Kansas City. "I called in some favors, plus my turn in the starting rotation isn't back up for another couple days."

Lorelai shot straight up, alarmed. "Are you hurt?"

"No. It's normal," he quickly reassured her. "It's a lot of stress on your arm. That's why I don't start every game. There's a five-man rotation, but the time between starts can be anywhere from three to five games."

She relaxed back into the pillows. "I knew you didn't pitch every game, but I didn't know why. There's a lot I don't know about what you do."

Now Luke found himself picking at the edge of the sheet, suddenly as nervous as the first time he managed to ask Rachel on a date. "What're you doing Saturday?"

"Saturday is a day of pre-rest," Lorelai informed him.

"Sorry?"

"See, you have a day of pre-rest on Saturday before the actual day of rest on Sunday," she explained.

Only Lorelai could effectively kill asking-out-on-a-date jitters with a statement like that. "Would you and Rory like to spend your day of pre-rest with me? That's my next time up in the rotation, and it's a home game against the Mariners. It's in the afternoon, so we can do dinner or something. You two can stay with us if you want. I've got a couple guest rooms, and so does Liz. I've got an allotment. All I need to do is let the box office know so they can hold aside the tickets and charge my account."

Her eyes lit up. "You want us to come see you being Kevin Costner in person?"

Luke felt the blush crawling over his face. "Oh geez."

"OK," she said happily and tucked herself back into his side. "I can see you look all hot in your uniform in person."

"Oh, yeah?"

She trailed her fingers over his chest again, this time with clear intent. "I mean, if it looks half as good on you in person as it does on TV, they might have to arrest me for public indecency."

"I'll bail you out," Luke promised and started to roll on top of her. But Lorelai pressed a hand to his chest, and he collapsed onto his back once more as she twitched the sheet away and took his length in hand. She watched his face as she made long, lazy strokes up and down the shaft, sweeping her thumb over the head. He tried to keep his gaze locked on hers, but his eyes closed against his will. When her mouth closed over him, he fisted the sheets with both hands as he bucked into her mouth, unable to stop the slow rolling of his hips until she pulled away to catch her breath and rest her jaw for a second.

"I've not done this before," she said, sounding like she was talking to herself more than anything. She pressed her lips to heated skin, then lightly squeezed him.

"Gone down on a guy?" he managed to ask.

"I've done that. But not really explored, you know?" She flashed a smile at him as she knelt at his side. She tucked her hair behind her ears with a casual flick of the hand before squeezing his cock once more. She ran her thumb up and down the blue vein on the underside, then gently cupped his balls. "You really don't appreciate the beauty of sex when you're 15, you know?"

She was going to kill him. She was going to incinerate him right then and there, and they would put death by blow job on the certificate. But what a way to go. It was taking every inch of fraying self control not to come all over her hands. He had a vision of it as she stroked him, and the fantasy was so strong that he couldn't make himself move. Then her mouth replaced her hand once more, and he was lost. One hand tangled into her hair as she gave a few long licks before sucking him deep. With a strangled cry, the world flashed white behind his closed eyes as his hips bucked again and again until he collapsed to the bed, gasping in air.

Lorelai pulled away slowly, coughed slightly, then Luke felt the mattress rise slightly as she got up. He heard water run in the sink and sleepily turned his head toward the door as she walked back out, a glass in hand. "Sorry," she apologized between sips. "That was a new experience as well."

"Yeah?"

"15, remember? Swallowing vs. spitting then? Much grosser." She set the glass on the nightstand and laid on top of the covers.

He stared at her with sleepy eyes. Her skin was layered with a fine sheet of perspiration, her nipples hard. Her breathing was ragged, and her legs moved a bit restlessly. It all was enough to banish the lethargy that was creeping over him in the post-orgasmic glow. Laying a hand on her stomach, he stretched up to kiss her softly. The muscles of her abdomen leaped beneath his fingers as he caressed her in long, sweeping strokes, creeping closer to the undersides of her breasts and the apex of her thighs with each pass. She squirmed impatiently, jerking her hips up to get his fingers where she craved them. He sank his teeth into her lower lip in a slightly scolding manner.

"It's my turn to explore," he whispered before pushing himself up to kneel next to her.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her hair spilled over the pillow, and the pupils in her eyes had blown wide with arousal. He skimmed the palm of his hand over her mound, then curved his fingers to press against her clit. The sharp gasp that edged into a keening cry drove him on as he separated her folds and slowly mapped her most intimate spots with his fingers. He studied her with the same intensity he did his playbook, memorizing how her face looked as he stroked her before turning his attention lower. He felt his brain sweep useless memories out of the way, searing the way she looked permanently in his mind. When he was in a lonely hotel room, he would be able to close his eyes and see this scene with clarity.

Then he replaced his hand with his mouth, and the keening cries became moans and sobs.

Hideously bad writers usually tried to compare the taste of a woman to foods and wines, but he preferred not to think about the taste but focus on it made her feel. Her hips bucked in a steady rhythm beneath him, just as when she was doing the same to him. One of her hands worked its way into his hair, gripping the locks so hard that it was nearly painful. She twisted and demanded and pleaded, and he let the words wash over him as he continued to drive her out of her mind. He hoped she was feeling even a fraction of the way she made him feel, because he wanted the fire consume her in the same way. He slid two fingers into her, crooked, and she came with a scream. He sat back on his heels, gently thrusting with his fingers as she rode out the orgasm and collapsed to the bed, tears leaking from her eyes.

Luke grinned at her, then reached for the glass of water. Lorelai laughed breathlessly as he sipped, then resumed his position next to her. She rolled into his side, and he closed his eyes, wishing the perfect afternoon could last forever.

* * *

Lorelai decided she and Rory would drive Luke back to Hartford, but when he revealed there were no direct flights from Bradley to Kansas City, they made the longer trek into Boston so he could fly out of Logan International.

The previous day had been filled with firsts. It was the first time she ever had a man in bed at her house, effectively shattering the line she had kept for 14 years between her life with Rory and her dating life. Putting a nail in that coffin was the fact that he stayed overnight. When Rory had gotten home from the library, Luke had taken them out to Silvano's, and they had a nice meal with plenty of leftovers. Her stomach pitched with nerves as they headed back home and Rory, without commenting on the change in the status quo, had bid them goodnight.

They didn't make love again, an unspoken agreement that it was a bit too strange to do so with Rory downstairs. That would eventually pass, but everything was too new at the moment. Luke stripped down to his undershirt and boxers, Lorelai donned her cutest pair of pajamas that were still clean, and they spent the evening curled in bed, quietly talking until the lack of sleep from the previous couple of days finally was too much. They had awoken with his arm looped around her waist, his nose buried in her hair, as Rory yelled from downstairs that if they didn't get a move on that they were going to miss Luke's flight.

They told Rory about the game during the drive, which prompted her to grill Luke on the exact books she needed to read so she could understand baseball better. Lorelai grinned as Rory took detailed notes, filling a small notepad she had brought with her and several napkins that were fished out of the glove box. Rory triple-checked the lists she had made3 as they parked and walked through the airport to the Delta flight that would be taking Luke back to his job.

Lorelai watched as Luke checked in at the counter and realized this would be the first time of many that she would do this. Or not. Would it eventually become so routine that she and Rory wouldn't even bother? She never really thought about what went into the working relationship of someone who spent a good deal of the year on the road. Really, until the past week, she hadn't put any thought into a long-term relationship at all. It simply never occur to her to think of the logistical aspects of dating a professional athlete. She had focused on just him and just her, and the miles between them seemed to enhance the relationship in a way.

But now that she knew how she felt toward him, and she knew his feelings in return, she wasn't sure how she felt about _this._

Luke walked back to them as the gate attendant began the boarding calls. "I'll be back on Thursday," he told them.

Rory gave him a quick one-armed hug before motioning to the nearby airport bookstore, leaving to give them a minute alone. They watched her walk away before he ran a hand down Lorelai's arm. "Hey, you OK?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah." She pasted on a smile. "Not used to the whole goodbye thing, you know?"

"Me neither," Luke admitted. "But, it is nice to have someone to say goodbye to."

Her smile softened as he tucked an errant curl behind her ear, and she looped her arms around his neck. "Let's make it a good one," she murmured before kissing him, not really caring that they were in the middle of a terminal. She kissed him as if he was going to be gone for weeks, not days. As she eased back, he pressed his lips to her forehead. She waved frantically as he swiped his ticket and walked through the gate onto the ramp that connected the terminal to the jet that would take him from her. He turned back just as he rounded the corner and gave her a small wave. She blew him a kiss and missed him the second he disappeared from sight.

Pressing her hand to her chest, laughing at herself for being just a bit silly about it all, Lorelai turned and nearly plowed over her father.

"I'm sorry," she started to say, then realized who it was. She backed up slightly. "Dad? What're you doing here?"

"Lorelai. It's good to see you." Richard peered over her shoulder at the departure gate. "Luke Danes. AL1994 MVP, three time All-Star pitcher. More than 2,000 strikeouts in his career so far, won the Cy Young Award in '93 and '94 and there's talk of him being up for it again this year. Three-time strikeout leader in the league. His performance has suffered a bit this year, however. Something tells me it has to do with the fact that he was kissing my daughter in the middle of Logan airport. Am I right, Lorelai?"

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Closed again. She would clearly win the Oscar for best impersonation of a fish.

"Grandpa!" Rory emerged from the bookstore with a plastic bag in hand, her eyes lit up.

"Rory!" Richard beamed as she threw her arms around him. "I didn't imagine I would see you girls here. I was just about to take a car back to Hartford. I was down in Orlando on a business trip."

"We can drive you home instead. Can we, Mom?"

No, no, no, everything inside Lorelai was screaming. But Rory didn't have a clue about the fight she had with her mother. "Yeah. Sure. Car's this way." She motioned toward baggage claim and hoped the walk to the car would be long enough for her brain to resuscitate.


	13. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12_

Not for the first time in her life, Lorelai was grateful for the very presence of Rory.

Her father focused most of his attention on her during the drive, and it reminded Lorelai of how very little time Rory spent around either of her grandparents. For a very good reason, of course, but seeing the rapport between the two made little twinges of guilt shoot through her gut. It was either that or the really bad gas station coffee she was forced to resort to when stopping for gas.

As they reached the outskirts of Hartford, Richard motioned to an approaching exit, the looming hulk of a mall just off the highway. "Why don't I treat you to dinner? My treat for the ride back to Hartford."

"What about Grandma?" Rory asked.

"She already has plans for dinner with some friends of ours. My flight got in earlier than expected. Besides, I never see you two enough. I would love to take you out to dinner, Rory."

"And I'm just the chauffeur," Lorelai muttered.

"Sure!" Rory piped up, and Lorelai caught the light in her eyes through the rearview mirror. Suck it up, she ordered herself, because Rory was excited to see her grandfather.

The mall had an attached Cheesecake Factory, which even made Lorelai perk up just a bit. Cheesecake really did make everything better. And the meal she sat through to get it wasn't that insufferable. She tried to remember the last time she had spent this much time alone with her father, and she realized it had been a good 18 years earlier. Her 13th birthday. The circumstances made her frown into her coffee as they ate dessert. She dearly wished it was a martini.

Richard reached for his wallet and pulled out a $100 bill. He held it up to Rory. "I hear there's a Barnes and Noble at the other end of the mall. Consider this a congratulations gift for getting into Chilton." He handed it over as Rory's eyes went so wide that Lorelai wondered if they would pop out of her head. It was on the tip of her tongue to deny the gift, but Rory had already thrown her arms around Richard and thanked him profusely before running out to the bookstore, promising to meet them at the car.

"She'll be in there until it closes," Lorelai said casually, hating the awkwardness of everything. She found herself looking at her watch. It was a three and a half hour flight to Kansas City, which meant Luke had to be arriving by now. It was just early afternoon, but part of her itched to call his cell phone and make sure he landed safely — reduced calling rates be damned. Besides, she wasn't going to be _that_ type of girlfriend. She was just thrown off because of the encounter with her father, that was all.

Richard watched as Rory strode out of the restaurant, her ponytail swishing as she walked. "Rory's quite tall. 5'7, it looks like?"

"Yeah, it's freakish. We're thinking of having her studied at M.I.T."

He left another wad of cash for the bill and got to his feet. "She doesn't look much like Christopher," he mused.

Lorelai felt her already stiff shoulders go so straight that she was sure she could balance a pen between the blades. "No," she said with a great deal of honesty, "she doesn't."

"Takes after my side of the family," Richard replied and beckoned to the door. "Come, walk with me, Lorelai."

Not that she had much of a choice without throwing Rory into an awkward situation. Lorelai followed her father out into the brightness of the mall. In his suit and tie, he looked out of place among the casual shoppers. He had back then as well, she remembered, when she had been 13 and he seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

"He called me yesterday," Richard told her as they meandered through the food court. "His Internet start-up goes public next month. This could mean big things for him."

His latest pipe dream, she was quite sure. "Is it really necessary to bring up Christopher?"

"He _is_ Rory's father. I assume that you would like to be appraised of his current whereabouts and activities."

"And it just so happens you need to tell me about this less than two hours after you see me kissing someone who isn't him. Dad, the only reason I would want to be kept appraised of Christopher is if he was paying me child support. Which, surprise, he isn't. Nor do I think he's planning to after nearly 15 years." Lorelai folded her arms over her chest and eyed a Dunkin Donuts. It was decent enough coffee. She started toward it.

"Who you were kissing has nothing to do with me speaking to Christopher."

Lorelai got in line. "And that's another thing. You love golf. You're obsessed about it. How the hell do you know so much about baseball? Especially about Luke?"

"In my line of business, you need to be well-versed about all sports in order to have conversations with your clients. It just so happens that one of ours happens to be the Jean R. Yawkey Trust , which owns the Red Sox. Ergo, I keep up to date on these things."

Lorelai just stared at Richard as he motioned to the cashier and ordered two coffees. She accepted the cup and tried not to down it as if it was her longed-for martini.

"John Harrington is a longtime friend and associate," Richard continued. "I'm sure if you ask Luke, he would tell you quite a bit about him, as John was instrumental in bringing him onto the team as one of their his acquisitions after John rejoined the Sox in the '80s. As such, I'm quite familiar with his accomplishments."

"And the rumors?" Lorelai spoke more into the coffee cup than to him directly.

"And the rumors," Richard acknowledged, "which I know are not true."

Lorelai's head snapped up, her Oscar-winning fish impersonation deciding to make an encore.

"It's like when you see your 13-year-old daughter at the mall when she was supposed to be in school, wearing her grandmother's stolen top and crying like the end of the world was approaching. And you know that there is what appears to be the truth, and what the truth actually is. I know that Luke Danes does not have an illegitimate daughter by a Hollywood actress, no matter what people say. It's not because of the courts, but because I saw the man, saw the coverage, and knew the truth. Just as I knew there was a good reason you weren't in school that day. There are appearances, and then there's reality."

She wondered if her father had any inkling as to how close she was to dropping her coffee cup. Richard was focused on his own coffee, staring bemused into the nearby display at a Bath and Body Works. She looked down at the lid of her cup, at the small drops of coffee clinging to the opening. The words came tumbling out without permission.

"It was Royston Sinclair III. He called me loud and weird and said there was a rumor going around that I wasn't actually a Gilmore. That I was the gardener's daughter and you and Mom bought me because you couldn't have children of your own. It was my birthday, remember? I was so crushed. I ran out class, out of school. That's how you found me at the mall. And we went and saw _Grease_ and _An Unmarried Woman_. A movie for me, and one for you." For the first time since her mouth decided to declare independence from her brain, Lorelai looked up at her father. "It was the best birthday I ever had."

"Thank you, Lorelai."

Lorelai felt her heart wobble, an unexpected surge of emotion making her want to try to forge a better path. "Dad…"

"I am aware of the confrontation between you and your mother. You've disappointed her."

And that desire died a quick, violent death. "Well, today's a day that ends with a y, so I'm not exactly surprised."

"She means well. Like you, she wants Rory to have a chance to succeed where you weren't able to."

Lorelai made an absent gesture, because it wasn't like the really weird toddler's outfit on display at the nearby Gymboree was going to illustrate her point. "But I have succeeded! I run one of the best-rated inns on the East Coast! Rory and I have a good home and a comfortable life. It's not the life you wanted for me, but I'm happy. We're happy. Rory is so bright, so smart. I don't want her thinking the only reason she got into Chilton is because of her name."

"Rory is a good girl," Richard agreed. "And part of that brightness and smartness is being able to capitalize upon the assets that you have. One of hers, as well as yours, is your name. Every action you do adds or takes away from the reputation that name has, whether it's getting pregnant at 16, running a 5-star rated inn, or dating a Cy Young Award winner."

Lorelai huffed. "You don't understand."

"There is a proper way to do things for a reason, Lorelai. It hasn't been easy for your mother these past 13 years, but it's time that you reconcile with her. With us. You have made it very clear through your actions that you can look after yourself and that you need nothing from anyone. However, you are going to need the strength of your family name more than ever."

They had reached the entrance to the Barnes & Noble, unwilling to cross the threshold. Once they did, they would need to keep the peace for Rory's sake, and besides, who better to witness the typical Gilmore family argument than dozens of strangers? At least this one wasn't the scene she'd had with Emily two days earlier. "What the hell does that even mean?"

Richard pinned her with one of those stares meant to intimidate his clients. "Lorelai. Do you understand what you're getting into?"

She lifted her chair and felt like she was 15 all over again. "With Chilton? Believe me, it's been haunting me from the day I mailed in the application."

"Not with Chilton." Richard threw away his empty coffee cup. "You will be under media scrutiny, Lorelai. You _and_ Rory, because of who you are with. Because of who he used to be with. Don't think a relationship with Luke Danes will go unnoticed. Now, let's go see if Rory has bought out the bookstore."

* * *

The water rained down Luke's back, spraying the tile wall where Lorelai was bracing herself, helpless to do anything but hang on. His hips pistoned, a hand reaching around to fondle her clit with fingers slick from shower gel as he drove himself into her. When she came, when he followed right after her, she stumbled as she nearly fell to her knees. He managed to catch her in time, arms shaking slightly as the water turned cool.

"Hi," she managed after dragging in a few deep breaths, lifting her face to his so he could kiss her. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." He twisted the taps off and reached outside the curtain for a towel. He handed it to her before fetching one for himself.

"I couldn't wait any longer."

"I could tell," he teased. "Especially when you sneaked into my house and into my shower."

"Hey, Liz let me in! Besides, someone had to make sure there weren't gremlins." Lorelai stumbled out of the shower and had to sit on the closed toilet seat. "Woo, wobbly legs."

"You drove all the way from Stars Hollow to prove there weren't gremlins?"

Lorelai fished through the discarded clothes on the floor before finding the dress shirt that Luke had been wearing on the flight home. She shrugged into it and did up the buttons. "I mean, you never know where you can find a Montgomery Ward store. I had to make sure you were in close proximity to one."

"Crazy lady." He walked naked into the bedroom, and she admired the view. All too soon, it was covered with clothes, but jeans did add a certain elegance to the ass beneath the denim. "Let me fix you dinner."

"I want dessert first." Deciding her legs were steady enough, and hello food, she scrambled off the toilet to follow him down the stairs.

"What do you think we were just doing?"

"Appetizers." She wrapped her arms around him from behind, nearly throwing him off balance. The resulting fall down the stairs wouldn't had been pretty, but he turned just in time to kiss her throughly.

Her hands were already plucking at the bothersome T-shirt when he brushed them away. "Refractory periods exist for a reason."

"Which means …?"

"We have about half an hour before dessert."

"Or sooner?" His teeth sank into the soft skin at the juncture between neck and shoulder. "Oooh, bitey!"

"C'mon, crazy lady. There might be a grilled cheese with your name on it."

"Yes!" She eagerly followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen. She smirked as he took the time to make sure the connecting door between his and Liz's half of the duplex was locked. "You're not going to make me eat vegetables with the grilled cheese are you?"

"Considering the last time you tried to eat celery resulted in you pitching it out the window?"

"It stinks!"

He tapped her nose. "Not vegetables."

Absurdly pleased with herself, Lorelai boosted herself onto the counter. "Thank you."

"Fruit on the other hand …"

"We'll negotiate."

She watched as he pulled out bread, cheese, and butter, absently swinging her legs as he went through the motions of making a light meal for them. She had driven from Stars Hollow after finishing work, the two days apart feeling like two years. The conversation with her father had run on a constant loop the entire time, mixing with the unfamiliar feeling of longing for a man. It felt like someone had severed a limb, or at least one of her toes. Not even when she and Chris had been deeply involved as teens had she felt this since of wanting just to simply be in the same physical proximity as another person. Not necessarily grabbing onto them, just breathing the same air.

She arrived in time to catch him in the shower, and her instincts had her shedding her clothes, whipping back the shower curtain and …

"Sookie's really OK keeping Rory overnight?" Luke's voice startled Lorelai from her daydream, and the smirk he shot in her direction told her he knew exactly what she had been thinking about. She gave an extra kick in response.

"Yeah, she's Rory's godmother. Not that we're into the whole church thing, but I wanted her to have a legal guardian in case something happened. She and Mia are her godmothers, respectively. If the Wienermobile takes me out at the ballpark on Saturday, I want her to be in good hands."

He flipped the sandwich in the skillet. "Not her grandparents?"

"You know what godparents are suppose to do? Beside the whole religious thing?"

"Yeah?"

"They have an interest in how the kid develops. My parents will be good to Rory, but I want her to have her own life, not what they wanted for her." She watched as he plated the two sandwiches, then reached for a bowl of apples. She very nearly spoke up about how she had craved apples during her pregnancy with Rory. "You've never met my father, have you? Richard Gilmore?"

"No. Why?" Luke handed her the plate as she slid off the counter.

"Just curious. He knows of you. A lot. Apparently his firm represents the trust that owns your team."

"Oh yeah?"

Lorelai dipped into the fridge for a beer and handed a second over to him before leading the way into the living room. "Says he's a personal friend of John Harrington."

"John's a good guy. He helped bring me up out of the minor leagues back in '87."

"That's what Dad said."

They settled on the couch, balancing their plates on their knees. "He kept me here too, when everything happened. A lot of guys get traded off. I've been lucky. I've been with one team my entire career, and I never wanted to go anywhere else. When the Sox could have traded me, John kept me on. I owe him a lot."

"Ah." Lorelai picked up her sandwich and frowned at it.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing." She picked at the toasted bread.

"Lorelai."

"My dad and I had a talk, that's all. It just made me a little nervous about Saturday." She covered up her anxiety by shoving part of the sandwich into her mouth.

Luke waited for her to swallow before responding. "No one's gonna bother you."

"I don't care about that. But what if they bother you? Hello, black sheep of Hartford society here." Lorelai waved at him. "Unwed mother at 16."

"Look, the craziness that happened six years ago is because Anna drove that machine. No one pays attention to people in my career unless we do something stupid. My stupid was getting involved with Anna Nardini. You are a beautiful, successful woman with an equally beautiful and successful daughter. I still don't know what the hell you're doing with me, but I grateful every goddamn day you've given me a chance." He set his plate on the coffee table. "I'm not an easy guy to live with, and I know that this can be hard on you. But we're going to make this work, Lorelai. I'm all in, you and me."

"All in," she repeated, winging an eyebrow when he took her plate and put it next to his. "What, no grilled cheese?"

"It's a miracle of science, but I'm ready for dessert now."

* * *

Lorelai and Rory met Liz and Jess at Fenway Park about two hours before the first pitch, enough time for them to get through the throng of people and cleared into the stadium using their passes. It never occurred to Lorelai to provide any sort of exposure to sports to Rory. The closest they had come was when 7-year-old Rory begged to try out for soccer and accidentally kicked the ball through the front window of Doose's. Taylor had been furious and Lorelai nearly had a heart attack from the cost before agreeing that if the store's insurance covered the replacement, she would never sign Rory up in another Stars Hollow sports league ever. It was a promise she had no issue keeping.

Liz took them through one of the souvenir shops, and Lorelai felt the burn in her credit card as she exclaimed over every kitschy item the store featured. A rack of jerseys caught her eye, and she all but dragged over to them as she started to rifle through them.

Liz watched them indulgently, turning to look over her shoulder as a familiar figure weaved his way through the crowds. Luke's progress was halting as he was hailed repeatedly, scribbling out autographs and speaking briefly to small children before extracting himself as politely as possible.

"Look at you, blowing off warm-ups," she teased as he finally reached her side.

Embarrassed, Luke shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've got time. I just figured I'd show you around a bit, then up to your seats."

"Uh huh." Liz elbowed him, her voice a teasing lilt. "Your crush is showing."

"Shut up."

Lorelai peered over the rack of clothes she was riffling through, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him. She was getting used to the strange flip-flop of her heart as he smiled back at her. "Look at all this stuff with your name on it!" She waved a jersey at them.

"You oughta see the underwear that was floating around there for a bit," Liz replied.

"Liz," Luke moaned as Lorelai gaped at them.

"Not sure how I feel about all those women wearing your name over their-" Lorelai gave an absent wave of the hand toward her crotch.

"The lawyers took care of it," he ground out.

Lorelai hummed and turned to the register. "Know where I can find some?" she murmured _sotto voce_ to Liz as she handed over her credit card.

"I can still hear you."

Lorelai ignored Luke, popping the jersey on over the T-shirt she wore. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and threaded it through the back of a Red Sox cap that she donned, bill facing outward. "How do I look?" The lack of response was immensely gratifying as his eyes simply glazed over. She immediately made a note to wear only the jersey to bed that night. Not that it would stay on very long.

"Want a bucket for all that drool?" Liz asked.

Luke sighed. "Can you take her home with you?"

They collected Rory and Jess, the teens having a hushed discussion over the books they had brought with them. Slightly sullen and very teenage boy, Jess barely spoke two words to Rory until she needled him into a heated discussion over literature. They continued it as Luke escorted them through the stadium, through the team-only areas and out onto the field near the dugout. He pointed out where the protectors were getting removed from the field and where the players were starting to warm up. A few of his teammates were signing autographs and taking photos with the fans, and he played the part as he showed them around, stopping every so often to do the same.

It reminded Lorelai of how Luke had behaved in Stars Hollow, his personality retreating to a far corner as he donned the role that was expected of him. She wondered how many years it took for him to perfect it, how fame and the whole mess with Anna had honed it. She thought of the man clad in a T-shirt and jeans as he made her grilled cheese and coaxed her into eating an apple, the one who had sought out a hardworking man in the wee hours of the morning to sign his father's store over to him, the one who had bought a duplex so his sister and nephew could have a home. He was definitely good at what he did, the shiny awards he kept almost tucked away at home boasting of it, but not that many people actually saw _him_.

"I never realized how much you did that," she mentioned as he strode back to her side after the latest round of autographs.

"What?"

"Pretended." Lorelai shrugged. "I recognize a kindred spirit."

He mirrored her shrug. "Comes with the job."

"But this isn't you."

Luke folded his arms over his chest, watching as the fans climbed into their seats. "I thought it was at one time. When my dad died, I just let it consume me. When everything happened with Anna, it just reminded me that it wasn't." He flicked a glance at her."You could see that. You saw it right away."

"The Mr. Verbose act at the town meeting gave you away. If you were that, you'd have shown it then."

He shook his head. "I have to go. Our turn to warm up."

She snagged his hand as he started for the locker room. "Kiss for good luck?"

Slowly, his gaze raked over her slim form, and there was no disguising the heat and desire. "You look good in that jersey," he murmured in a husky tone that had her fervently wishing they were alone.

"I'll wear nothing but it tonight," she whispered.

"That better be a promise." He leaned down to her as she looped her arms around his neck, kissing until it felt like stars were swimming in front of her eyes. Or maybe it was little hearts, like in the comics Kirk liked to read and sometimes showed her and Rory. His hands slid down to her waist, then ooh, her ass. He brought her flush against him, and before she could make a very illicit suggestion, he kissed her forehead and let her go.

Lorelai dragged in several deep breaths, then absently patted his arm. "Now, go break a leg."

Luke rolled his eyes. "That's not something you say to a ball player before he goes on the field."

Lorelai laughed and swatted his ass as he gave her another quick kiss before walking away. Satisfied, she leaned against a nearby post and admired his ass in the tight pants. It looked better in person than on TV. Who was she kidding, she was probably going to spend the entire game having fantasies about …

"Mom!"

Banishing the sexy thoughts to the back of her mind, Lorelai saw Rory's attention was focused on the Jumbotron that overlooked the ball field. So was Jess and Liz. So were a good many people.

And Lorelai lifted her own gaze to see footage of hers and Luke's heated kiss flash across the screen.

* * *

 _Many, many thanks to nojamhands for letting me run the stadium scene by her. We had a great discussion about what was and wasn't possible back in 1999!_


	14. Chapter 13

_Chapter 13_

Luke stumbled into the house a little after midnight nearly six days later, the team having lost to Oakland. They had racked up three losses so far that week, and the coaches were _not_ happy. It certainly hadn't helped that he had been on the mound leading the clusterfuck, but at least he was damn sure the problems weren't originating with him this time. Even so, things were starting to enter crunch time and playoffs were in the beginning of October. It was just now creeping into late August. Where the hell had the summer go?

Instead of dragging himself up the stairs, he simply collapsed on the sofa, staring at the ceiling fan as it lazily turned above him. It was almost hypnotic. His stomach was making demands for food, and he yearned for Lorelai.

Saturday night and Sunday morning had been … fine, she would say magical, but he would rather say pretty damn perfect. The win over Seattle had been capped by dinner with the girls, Liz, and Jess. Lorelai and Rory had introduced the three of them to a condensed version of what they termed Gilmore Movie Nights. There was a lengthy list of rules, all of which were completely thrown out the window before the first of the chosen movies - _Citizen Kane_ \- was over. Then Liz promptly stole Rory for a sleepover and Lorelai had pulled him into his room. Moments later, she was wearing nothing but his discarded jersey, and then he couldn't think at all.

Luke had woken up with Lorelai tucked into his side and didn't want her to leave.

But life's demands intruded and the girls headed back to Stars Hollow and he to his next game. They were restricted to phone calls once again until he returned from Minnesota and could catch his breath. It happened to coincide with the Stars Hollow town meeting where the final permits would be issued to Cesar for converting the hardware store into a diner. Still, 11 days was a long stretch. It hadn't seemed that long before.

He had to be back at the park to catch the bus to the airport in … eight hours? Nine? Wheels up around 10, four-hour flight, game at 7 local time. Reminders swirling in his head, Luke was nearly asleep when he heard the connecting door open between the two halves of the duplex. Liz's footsteps were heavy as she walked across the room. She'd never been any good at sneaking around.

"Whatcha up to?" she asked, throwing herself on the other half of the L-shaped sofa.

He shrugged. "Thought I would watch the ceiling fan."

"Is it interesting?" There was enough amusement in her voice that had he the strength, he would had lobbed one of the small cushions at her.

"One of the slats needs tightening." Luke closed his eyes. "Liz?"

"Yeah?"

"Go away."

It wasn't a new exchange between them. And his stomach started to twist into knots when Liz didn't respond with some sort of joke, quip, or throwing of pillows. More awake now, Luke shoved himself onto his elbows. Liz sat holding papers in her hand, biting her lip in worry. He hadn't bothered turning on the light, but there was enough from the one he left on in the kitchen to see what she held. He groaned, collapsing again. "Get rid of those things. Burn them. Feed them to the garbage disposal. Why the hell do you even have them?"

Liz unfurled a copy of the National Enquirer. "Because you've gotta see it."

"You know I hate looking at those things."

"You _need_ to see it." She opened it a page and folded it back, then shoved it in his face. He was forced to grab it out of self-preservation. It was either that or be suffocated by the latest antics of some celebrity he had zero interest in. He shoved up to throw the whole thing back at her when he froze.

It was hard to miss the giant photo of him and Lorelai kissing near the bullpen. It had been the same one that the stupid videographer had grabbed days earlier, telegraphing his new relationship to all of Fenway Park. Someone had pointed a camera at them during the whole thing, because underneath were a smaller sequence of shots of them breaking the kiss, her swatting his ass, both of them looking startled by Rory, then their shock at being seen on the Jumbotron.

Dominating the rest of the page was a giant picture of Anna, the plague that refused to go away. Luke made himself read it, nausea churning in his gut as every publicly-known scrap about Lorelai was recounted in the article, highlighting the fact that she was a single mom. Then it was suddenly soliciting Anna's reactions, asking about him ignoring his "real" child for another one.

He flung the thing away before he could read the answers. His temper was already near the breaking point.

"I've gotta tell Lorelai," he told Liz.

"I suspect she already knows."

—

"Could you sign this?" Michel asked.

Lorelai absently took the Sharpie from Michel, along with the papers he passed over. The only reason she hadn't noticed what she held in the first place was because she was on the phone with their linen supplier, trying to track down an errant load of towels. She glance down just before marker hit paper and promptly dropped the entire stack in front of Michel. She finished her call and hissed, "Michel."

"I was so close," he said, absently flipping through the registration book.

"I'm not going to autograph those things!" Lorelai glared at the stack of papers, which instead happened to be issues of different tabloids with articles about her and Luke.

"But they would fetch so much on eBay. Would you do at least just one? I had to go all the way to Litchfield to get them."

Lorelai sighed and leaned against the front desk. "Why Litchfield?"

"They didn't have any in town," Michel sniffed. "Bootsy said he wouldn't carry this issue, so I would have to find it elsewhere."

Lorelai swept the entire pile into the trash, then to ensure that Michel didn't fish them back out, hefted the trash can into her arms.

"But I paid $20 for those!" Michel protested as she hauled the can with her into the kitchen.

"Again?" Sookie asked as Lorelai dumped the smaller can into the larger industrial one near the worktable.

"Second time this week. Honestly, Sook, this thing is getting out of hand." Lorelai dropped the can and headed straight for the coffee. It was the phone calls. The incessant phone calls that never seemed to stop at the house, looking for comment on that stupid trash tabloid article and the ones that followed from its rival magazines. At first, she had thought it funny. She and Rory had stumbled across the issues in Hartford while getting last-minute school supplies for Chilton. They had giggled and started a scrapbook. She had focused less on the Anna comments and more on the pretty damn good pictures of her and Luke together.

"And," she told Rory, "you'll have something to talk about with the kids at school." Something, she hoped, other than the fact her mother and grandmother had a very public flight while buying school uniforms.

But then the calls started from reporters and wouldn't stop. It got to the point where Lorelai had to disconnect the land line and use her cell phone for everything. Her bill was going to be insane, but it couldn't be helped. That number wasn't public and only a few people knew it. No one had shown up in person, but she figured she wasn't big enough of a deal to be worthy of a plane ticket from LA or wherever those things were made.

"What does Luke think about it?"

"He's mad and keeps offering to pay for my cell phone bill." She smiled into her coffee, thinking about the night before when she had stayed up way too late because he was busy ranting about the tabloid press. God, she missed him. One more day and he would be back in Stars Hollow for an all-too brief visit to formally sign the lease for Cesar.

She had plans to push him onto the first horizontal surface she could find and have her wicked, wicked way with him. A sturdy vertical one would work as well.

Sookie grinned. "You look happy."

"That seems to be a popular refrain these days." Rory had commented on it during the past couple of weeks, and several people around town had remarked on it. Even Michel had noticed.

"Because you deserve it. You've spent so many years raising Rory and struggling to put a roof over your heads. You deserve to have someone just for you."

Lorelai thought about what Michel had said about the lack of the tabloids featuring her and Luke in Stars Hollow. Had everyone simply bought them all? She took a sip of coffee. "Hey, Sookie, what did the town think of Luke when he went into the major leagues?"

Sookie flashed her a smile as she chopped vegetables. "Oh, everyone was really proud. They still gather down at KC's to watch his games. Every single one."

"No one was mad at him for leaving his dad behind?"

"Taylor grumbled, but that's Taylor. He's always doing something like that. I think the tourism dollars from the fans caused him to see the light."

"He thinks everyone's angry at him for leaving his dad to die."

Sookie gaped. "What? No! Why would he think that?"

"No clue." Lorelai reached for the pile of mail she had brought into work and unceremoniously dumped near the coffee pot earlier that morning before being pulled away by Michel for the first of the small emergencies that cropped up at the inn every day. She frowned at the thin envelope on top of the stack. "Yippie, more paperwork from Chilton."

"Seems a little small for paperwork."

Lorelai opened it and pulled out the folded letter. A check came out with it, fluttering to the floor. She scooped it up, frowned at it. "Maybe they finally decided to hop on board the whole global warming thing. You know, only destroy half as many trees. Huh. They refunded part of my check. Knew they were overcharging …"

"Lorelai?" Sookie glanced up as Lorelai's voice trailed off, then did a double take. "Sweetie?"

"This isn't part of the check. This is _all_ of it." Putting the check down, Lorelai unfolded the letter.

"What, did it bounce?"

"No, it did not bounce!"

Lorelai read the letter. Read it again. Read it a third time. It felt like it was a letter that should belong to someone else, not her. The words looked like it was some sort of farce. Any moment now, Ed McMahon would pop up from behind the table and present her with her sweepstakes check for $25,000 instead.

But there was no Ed McMahon. No sweepstakes. Just the normal sounds of the inn going on around her and Sookie's increasingly worried voice at her elbow. With nerveless fingers, she handed the letter to Sookie.

She was barely through the first paragraph before her head snapped up. "They're rejecting Rory? Why?"

"I don't know." Lorelai's voice was wobbly and she was precariously closed to tears. "She hasn't done anything. She hasn't. Rory's a good girl. A model student. Everyone wants a Rory in their school. Some schools even want two Rorys, maybe three."

But you have done something, a voice in the back of her mind reminded her.

No. _No_. Surely the school wouldn't kick out Rory because she got into a fight with her mother over the school uniforms. It was ridiculously petty and small … and just the sort of thing these schools did. She knew, she had been kicked out of her own high school. Yes, there was a clear difference between being pregnant at 16 and this, but what else could it be? Unless …

Lorelai shoved the letter at Sookie and grabbed the check. "I've gotta go."

"Where?" Sookie rushed after her as she stormed into the lobby, ignoring Michel and grabbing her purse from her office.

"Emily. She has to be behind this," Lorelai snapped and sprinted for the car.

Sookie started to follow, then noticed a familiar shape sitting on the front desk. She snatched up Lorelai's cell phone. "Lorelai, you left your-" Sookie called out, holding it in the air, but Lorelai was already out the front door. Sookie rushed outside, making it to the small staff parking lot as the Jeep peeled down the drive, heading for town and the interstate that lay beyond.

When the phone in her hand rang, Sookie leaped a bit and stared down at the tiny caller ID screen, then hit the answer button. "Lorelai's phone, this is Sookie! Oh hi, Bu-Luke! Yeah, it's Sookie St. James. I was a couple years behind you. Actually, it's good you called, because something really bad just happened. No, no, Lorelai's not hurt nor Rory, but if you're around, you might want to come. Or, actually, hang on."

Sookie ran back into the inn, past Michel and into Lorelai's office. She tucked the phone beneath her chin as she rifled through the Filofax that Lorelai left on her desk. "You'd be better off going to Hartford, to her parents' place. You may want to take bail money. Ah ha! Got a pen?" She read off the address. "What happened? Rory got rejected from Chilton. Crap, crap, Rory. I'll take care of Rory, you handle Lorelai."

—

Luke was surprised he didn't get a speeding ticket hurling down I-84 between Boston and Hartford. He didn't care if he racked up a dozen of them. He just needed to get to Hartford, to get to her side, to find out what the hell happened. Because the words "Rory got rejected from Chilton" didn't make any sense on any planet in the universe.

His relationship with Rory was something separate from the one he had with Lorelai - an unexpected pen pal who hadn't had much of a male influence in her life. They had spent the summer exchanging books and postcards. She was smart, wicked smart. She could easily give Jess a run for his money when it came to sheer book knowledge. Rory was worthy of Chilton, of Harvard, of any place where she wanted to be. There was no reason on earth why Chilton would suddenly reject Rory unless it had to do with the whole money situation. But that, too, couldn't be the issue. The check had cleared on his end to Lorelai and she had mentioned it cleared on hers to the school.

This wasn't Luke he had planned to spend his day. He wound up with an unexpected day off and, with his manager's blessing, had hopped an earlier flight back to Boston. He had every intention of surprising Lorelai and Rory in Stars Hollow and had spent the flight repeatedly fantasizing about the surprised delight on Lorelai's face when he showed up at the inn. The days without her had been nothing short of agony, and he found himself wondering how long he could do this.

The elder Gilmores lived in a mansion that befitted someone of their wealth and status. Hell, he could easily buy one for himself if he wanted, except it just wasn't him. It was too formal, too _everything_. The grounds were nice. And there were a lot of cars parked in the drive. Even the Jeep sat further down the street. Luke parked in front of it and quickly walked the half block up to the open gates of the mansion and inside.

There was no mistaking where Lorelai was. He could hear the raised voices from the front of the house. He found a path leading around to the back and took it, making his approach as quiet as possible.

Lorelai faced an older woman with brown hair several shades lighter than hers, fire flashing in her eyes as she waved a check at her. Her mother. A group of women sat frozen at a table behind them, watching the drama unfold with fascinated looks. Luke had no doubt every word would be relayed in every gossip circle in Hartford and beyond.

"How could you do this to your own granddaughter?" Lorelai demanded. "Rory's dream was to go to Chilton, and you ruined it because you didn't know where the money came from!"

"I most certainly did not do such a thing," her mother responded in a frigid voice that would have terrified him as a child. "And I do not appreciate you storming into the middle of my DAR meeting and making a scene over something terribly minor."

"I don't call Rory getting kicked out of Chilton terribly minor!"

"I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding. Is that not right, Bitty?" Lorelai's mother turned to one of the women at the table, then grew still. The woman, Bitty, refused to look Lorelai's mother in the eye. "Bitty? What happened with Rory? She's still enrolled at Chilton, right?"

"There are plenty of other fine schools in the area, Emily," Bitty began, but Lorelai stormed over to her.

"What happened to Rory?" she demanded. "Why did your pompous ass of a husband kick her out of Chilton?"

"Lorelai, calm down," Emily snapped. "That is not language to use if you want to rectify this situation."

Lorelai whipped around. "No! I will not calm down! I have worked and I have saved for years for Rory to get into this school, so she can go to Harvard or whatever college she wants! And now she's been kicked out because you have a grudge against me!"

"Stop it, Lorelai, I do not carry a grudge against you."

"Oh no? Then tell me what that little scene in the uniform shop was."

"It was your pride letting you get in the way of letting me and your father help you with Rory."

"You don't want to help Rory, you want to control her." Lorelai's gaze flitted over Emily's shoulder, then her jaw dropped. "Luke," she breathed as he stepped fully into view. "What are you doing here?"

"You left your phone at the inn. Sookie told me where you were," he explained, about two seconds away from making profuse apologies. But then she was in his arms, and he held her to him tightly. For the first time since she left 10 days earlier, everything felt right with the world. Well, at least a little better than it had been. He stroked her hair and completely forgot about their riveted audience.

Luke felt the moment Lorelai remembered where she was and pulled back into herself. She gathered herself, faced her mother once again, was in the process of opening her mouth when the back door slid open.

"Ah, there you are, Emily," a man he presumed was Lorelai's father said as he walked outside, absently flipping through some papers in his hand. "Ladies," he nodded to the assembled group, then winged an eyebrow. "Lorelai, I did not expect to see you here. Nor you, Luke Danes." He held out his hand. "Richard Gilmore. Nice to meet you. I'm a good friend of John Harrington."

Luke shook it and muttered the basic pleasantries, ignoring the buzz from the women at the table. He supposed they were more used to seeing him in a baseball cap.

"What brings the two of you here?" Richard asked.

Emily stared at her husband, then at him and Lorelai. Luke saw the moments the dots connected in Emily's mind. "It was _you_! You gave Lorelai the money," she breathed.

"Dad," Lorelai started to say, but Richard smoothly inserted himself between his daughter and the group.

"Why don't we discuss this inside over a nice drink. You'll join us?" Richard said to Luke as he ushered Lorelai before him.

Emily hesitated two seconds, said something Luke couldn't hear to the women, then followed them inside.

"Richard, how long have you known about this?" Emily gestured to Luke and Lorelai as Richard led them toward a drinks cart.

"Oh, a couple of weeks."

"And you didn't think to tell me?"

"It wasn't my news to share." Richard poured himself a drink. "Brandy anyone?"

Lorelai stood alone in the middle of the room, looking quietly devastated. The fight had drained out of her, at least for the moment, and her eyes were haunted. Luke moved to her side, rubbing the small of her back. "What did the letter say?" he asked quietly.

"Just that Rory's enrollment had been rescinded, that the board of trustees felt she wasn't a suitable student. They returned the money I paid." Lorelai's voice hitched, the words tearing from some place deep inside her. "They didn't explain why. I was going to go over to the school but-"

"You will not," Richard said, his authority booming in every word. "There are ways around doing this, but going into a man's office and badgering him is no way to get him to agree to change his mind."

"You're not going to get involv-"

"Oh stop it right now, Lorelai," Emily snapped. "We are involved because you chose to come over to the house and make a scene in front of the DAR."

Luke's nose wrinkled. He wasn't the biggest fan of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

"We are involved because Rory is our granddaughter," Richard corrected and pinned Lorelai with a steely look. "Do you remember what I told you about needing the strength of your family name?"

Lorelai opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she threw herself on the sofa.

Richard nodded and walked into his office.

Emily turned to Luke. "Well, I sincerely hope that you don't plan to get my daughter pregnant and abandon her."

"Mom!" Lorelai growled.

"You really don't strike me as someone who believes a tabloid, Mrs. Gilmore," Luke replied mildly, fighting every urge to roll his eyes.

"I wouldn't reach such a thing," Emily sniffed. "But people can and do talk, and your former girlfriend has strong ties to this area. She's from Woodbridge, am I correct?"

Luke didn't answer her. He simply sat next to Lorelai and took her hand. He rubbed the back of it until she looked at him. "What am I going to do? What am I going to tell Rory?" she whispered.

"We'll think of something. You're not alone." He squeezed her hand, and she gave him a tremulous smile.

"Of all the nerve." Richard stormed out of his office. He turned eyes that showed genuine sorrow to his daughter. "I got a little further than your mother, but not by much. It wasn't Headmaster Charleston's decision."

"Yes, it was," Emily hissed. "He has the final say-so over this sort of thing."

"He wouldn't go against the board of trustees. One of the specifically called for Rory's removal and he got the rest of the board behind him. It is not the first time we have been encouraged to go down a different path by one." Richard tugged at his coat and Luke realized that a different set of trustees at a different school had highly encouraged the Gilmore parents that it was best for their pregnant 16-year-old daughter to finish her education elsewhere. "He did reveal who among the trustees called for Rory's removal. An E.R. Collingswood."

"I have no idea who that is," Emily replied. "Do you, Lorelai?"

"No, I know people who use their real names rather than a string of initials."

"Honestly, Lorelai."

Luke's stomach dropped as Lorelai and her mother continued to bicker. It was the same sensation he felt when he looked at April Nardini for the first time. The day he was served with the custody papers. The day he found out his father had cancer. "I um …," he started, then cleared his throat. "I know who he is."

Lorelai's head snapped around, eyes wide with disbelief. "What?"

The words lodged in Luke's throat, but they wouldn't come out. He needed to tell them that it wasn't Emily Gilmore's fault. It wasn't any of their faults. It was his and his alone, because he had been so damn selfish to have wanted something for himself. Rory had been kicked out of Chilton because he had been stupid enough to believe that the past was behind him, and those who sided with Anna wouldn't take their anger at him out on an innocent teenage girl.

Luke drew in a breath and told them that E.R. Collingswood was Anna's godfather.

* * *

 _Author's note: Hiiii folks! We are in the final chapters of this story, and I am so sorry about the radio silence! Life has been busy, and I wanted to get this chapter out before I headed on my yearly trip to Toronto this weekend. Please enjoy!_


	15. Chapter 14

_Chapter 14_

It shocked Luke that he still had the address for Anna's parents. Granted, it had taken Liz an hour of digging through his papers to find it. She teased him in the past for being a bit of a packrat, but in this case, it served him well.

He went to see them in person, because he knew full damn well it was harder to slam a door in someone's face than it was to hang up on them. The hitch in his plan came in the form of Lorelai. She insisted on going with him, refusing to take no for an answer. They argued in soft whispers at her parents' home until he caved. Really, it hadn't taken much for him to give in. He would give her anything.

They dropped his truck off in Stars Hollow and continued onto Woodbridge in the Jeep. Anna's parents lived in a modest ranch-style home that looked like it belong more on the West Coast than it did in Connecticut. Luke had only been there once, when Anna was still pregnant and he thought he was on the verge of becoming a father.

Lorelai swung to the curb and started to get out, but he quickly stayed her.

"Let me do this," Luke told her.

Challenge flashed in her eyes. "You're not doing this alone."

"Look, if you're standing at the door with me, it's gonna make them less likely to want to talk to me. I've got a slim chance as is." He sighed. "Please?"

Lorelai pouted a bit, and it made Luke want to smile. "Fine. Because you used the magic word."

"Please?"

"No. Ice cream."

Luke winged an eyebrow. "Am I buying you ice cream?"

Lorelai's smile was full of mischief. "You are now."

"You are something else."

"Funny, I hear that all the time."

Luke strode up the walk, shaking his head. Lorelai really _was_ something else. The strain of the situation showed on her face, but she still smiled and tossed quips as if her life depended on it. His admiration for her grew even more in those few seconds, and it gave him the courage to ring the doorbell.

Anna's mother answered it, her smile welcoming until she recognized him. The smile dropped and, without saying a word, she started to slam the door.

Luke barely got his foot wedged in the open space, just kept from wincing as wood met bone. "Mrs. Nardini, please."

"I don't want to talk to you," she hissed.

"I don't want to be here either, but this isn't about me. Please, just give me a minute. Thirty seconds." And get the damn door off of his foot before he had to explain to his managers why he had a broken foot.

Anna's mother eased the door open slightly, and Luke pulled his foot back. "Talk, then leave or I'm calling the cops."

"I need to speak with Anna's godfather," he said hastily. "I need him to reconsider the enrollment of a freshman student at Chilton. I know he was behind getting Rory Gilmore kicked out. He's got to get them to let her back in. None of this is Rory's fault."

"Why should we help your girlfriend's daughter when you won't even acknowledge your own child?"

"April's not mine, Mrs. Nardini. You and I both know that. April isn't mine unless my ancestry has changed somehow in the past 33 years, which it hasn't."

Anna's mother didn't respond, and it was enough to make Luke almost hope. April Nardini was a beautiful child. She had her mother's nose and her hair. But whoever he was, she had her father's skin color and facial features - nothing that was in his own family line that went back to English sheep farmers. Or so Liz's spotty genealogy research had turned up.

"You made promises to her," Anna's mother said, the words half-hearted and tired.

Luke couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Anna's family were victims of her actions, just as he was. He used that sympathy to keep pressing his case. "I made those promises when I thought she was carrying my child. Whoever April's father really is, he deserves to know. If she had been honest with me from the start, we could had worked something out."

"You clearly have no problem playing daddy to that woman's child." Anna's mother jerked a finger toward the Jeep where Lorelai waited.

Luke didn't bother denying it. "You know none of this is her fault. Just like none of this is April's fault. You can blame me all you want, but don't take this out on Lorelai and Rory. What if someone did this to April one day?"

He hadn't intended for it to sound like a threat. But clearly it hit some sort of nerve. Anna's mother stared at him for an agonizing moment, then she rattled off an address so fast that Luke nearly asked her to repeat it. He didn't dare do so. Reciting it to himself over and over again in his mind, he thanked her. Her response was to slam the door in his face.

At least his foot was intact.

"Well?" Lorelai asked as he got back in the Jeep.

"1437 Oakwood Circle," Luke said, grabbing paper and a pencil from the glove box and scribbling it down.

"Is that our next stop?"

"It is."

"Then ice cream?"

"Then ice cream."

* * *

Once again, Lorelai didn't need to get out of the car. Not that it really mattered. She was able to witness the exchange between Luke and Anna's godfather quite clearly from the driveway.

She was also quite sure half of the state could hear it.

"Drive, drive," Luke yelped as he leaped into the passenger seat, yanking the door shut and hitting the lock before grabbing his seat belt.

Lorelai already had the Jeep in reverse. "I still can't believe he challenge you to a duel!"

"They're not even legal!" Luke fumbled with the seat belt before getting it hooked in.

"I mean, I know I've seen re-enactors do them, but still."

"Maybe he is a re-enactor! I wonder if he knows Taylor."

"Knowing my luck, they're probably first cousins," he muttered.

He turned to her, watching her as she navigated the roads toward the Interstate that would take them back to Stars Hollow. "I'm sorry," he said as she turned onto the highway.

Lorelai shrugged. "It was entertaining."

On some bizarre planet, to some baffled spectator, it probably would be considered some form of entertainment. Anna's godfather had been waiting for them when they pulled up, no doubt tipped off by Anna's mother. His tirade was nothing Luke hadn't heard before. However, challenging him to a duel over Anna's honor was definitely a unique take on things. When Anna's godfather brought out the rapier, Luke had done the only thing he could do.

Run for the car.

Duel or no, the end result was still the same. Rory Gilmore was not allowed to go to Chilton.

* * *

She pretended. She was good at pretending. So was he.

They pretended through the evening, when Rory talked them into pizza and movies. They kept pretending as they saw Rory off to bed.

The pretending stopped when they lay next to each other in the dark.

Lorelai had grown up among the Hartford elite and was used to their tactics. Her peers in high school had excelled in the art of subtle cruelty. But this was different. At least when she had been raked over the coals for being an unwed teenage mother, she could fight back in her own way. Her enemies were right there, and she didn't hesitate in showing them up.

But this was so, so different. Everything in her wanted to hunt down Anna Nardini and demand to know why she took out her frustrations - even indirectly - on an innocent 14-year-old girl. But what would it accomplish? It wouldn't get Rory back into Chilton.

Lorelai had selected the school based on two important criteria: one was that it hadn't been the prep school she herself had attended. She imagined Rory's presence there going over _really_ well. The second was that it was right on the commuter line, which meant Rory could get there from Stars Hollow with relative ease. There were other schools in the Hartford area with reputations as sterling as Chilton, and there were Yale feeder schools down toward New Haven. But all of them would involve long, complicated commutes.

 _You're going to have to choose_ , some horrible part of Lorelai's brain told her, and she rejected it with every fiber of her being. _Not now. Not yet._

Luke turned on the lamp and turned to her, the same sorrow she felt reflected in his eyes. His grief was hideous and unbearable, so she reached for him. Their kisses were sloppy and desperate at first, slowing as the burst of adrenaline subsided. Then they turned long, deep, and hungry, like he was trying to pull her heart straight into him. He was the first to pull away and quickly shed his clothes before starting on hers.

He lingered over each part of her that he exposed to the light, almost as if he was searing it in his memory. Unshed tears clogged her throat as she ran her fingers through his hair. She willed her body to respond to his touch, but her heart was already shattering into a thousand pieces. Tears slid down her cheeks as he worshipped her. Wasn't this supposed to be the time for desperate sex? Whole romance novels were built around the concept. What if it was the last time?

When she was naked, he sat back on his haunches and rubbed her calf. She shook his head to his unspoken question. There was no way she could have sex. He crawled back up her side and took her in his arms. He murmured to her as he held her, soft words that she couldn't quite make out over the sound of everything.

They lay there, pressed skin to skin, comforting each other with the simplest of touch until morning provided an escape.

* * *

Luke would had gone all the way back to Boston, expect he promised he would be at the town meeting for Cesar. There was really nothing to do until then, and he found that he couldn't be around Rory without guilt sitting on his chest like an elephant. So he escaped the Crap Shack after breakfast, arranging to meet Cesar at the hardware store with the lease.

He drove by his childhood home and saw men painting the trim a cheerful yellow where it had once been blue. He ignored the pinch in his heart. He also ignored the cemetery, unable to handle visiting his parents' graves at the moment.

Luke parked in back and reached for the sunshades tossed on the dash. He stared down at the lenses, Lorelai's teasing voice from that town meeting months ago filling his head. With a muttered oath, he tossed the shades back on the dashboard and went through the back door of the hardware store.

The rooms were completely empty now. Even the furniture that had been in his dad's old office was now in the same garage that held his dad's boat. He tried to remember it the way it had been. Wasn't he suppose to remember the smell of fresh-cut pine or the metallic scent of new nails, stuff like that? Instead, all Luke smelled was the Pine-Sol used to scrub the floors. It didn't feel like his father anymore. It had still, that first night he had been there, especially the office.

Now it was just a generic, empty building. It was still his. It would always be his on paper. But in a big way, it no longer belonged to him.

Luke heard Cesar's whistle as he came in the back door and plastered on the game face he had developed over the years. He shook Cesar's hand and listened as the other man outlined his plans for the space. He wasn't sure how it happened, but he eventually found a tape measure in his hand and was helping to measure out space in the back room for an oven, refrigerator, and a prep counter.

"I was thinking of calling the diner after you," Cesar said as he marked areas on the floor with chalk.

Luke stood over him, scribbling down measurements on a pad of paper. "Don't do that. Do your own thing."

"You really think people would get American diner food from a place called Cesar's?"

Luke shrugged. "Why not? They get Chinese food from a place called Al's Pancake World."

Hours later, they walked together to the town meeting, where Cesar was peppered with questions the moment the door to the dance studio slid open. Luke hung in the background, content to let Stars Hollow lavish its overwhelming attention on the new diner owner. After all, he was old news. Several people were weighing in with food suggestions and … yup, that was Kirk Gleason angling for a job. Taylor had a long, itemized list of holidays and festivals the town observed and what decoration was required for each, and he was making sure that Cesar knew every one of them.

Luke's intention to actually sit through the damn meeting were scuttled once Lorelai and Rory walked in. Just a day earlier, he had actually been looking forward to sitting with them, coming full circle as the last of Cesar's licenses were approved and announced in front of the town. He wanted to squeeze in as close as he could to Lorelai, to breathe in her scent as she teased and snacked her way through the proceedings. He wanted to take them to dinner after, wherever they wanted, and listen to Rory gush about the things she was doing to get ready for school. He wanted to go home with them, watch a movie, go to bed, and make love with Lorelai until dawn.

But he couldn't have any of this, because there was no Chilton for Rory.

And it was his fault.

Rory spotted him and tugged on Lorelai's arm, but Luke was already moving. He barely managed a wave back in their direction as he threaded through people to reach the door. The room seemed to close in, choking the air out of him as effectively as having a load of bricks drop on his chest. He couldn't do it. He couldn't stay.

His feet hit the sidewalk, and it took all his self-control not to move into a full-on sprint. He heard his name being called behind him. His real name, not the Butch moniker the town slapped on him back in his high school days and he hated with every fiber of his being. Only that, and the fact that it wasn't Lorelai's voice, was enough to have Luke turn back.

Miss Patty had followed him out of the dance studio, huffing as she reached him on the sidewalk. "You always move so fast, dear." She patted his arm. "Then again, you always did. I do wish you would stay a little longer."

"I need to get back to-"

She cut him off so neatly it seemed intended. "You realize how proud we all are of you?"

Floored, Luke gaped at her. "How?" he managed.

"Look at what you've done!" Patty gestured to his physique. "Don't listen to Taylor. He boasts about the tourism number every spring because of your career. You're the single best thing to ever come out of Stars Hollow, and honey, you had to live up to me. I'm certainly not headed for the Hall of Fame."

"But I left! My dad was sick, and I left."

Patty's teasing dropped, but she kept patting his arm. "You had to go. He wanted you to go. You know the summer I spent with the Rat Pack, opening for them on the Strip?"

Everyone knew of that summer. Before his rise to fame, Miss Patty had been the town celebrity. Luke's childhood was filled with stories of who she dated, how many she dated (usually at the same time), and the places she visited. Patty had been in enough movies to have the theater do a small movie festival centered around her when he was 14.

"Oh, it was so much fun. It was an experience I'll never forget. But I know very well what you were feeling." She blinked, staring off into the distance. "I never finished that run. My mother died, and no one told me for three days. They couldn't reach me. I don't think she ever forgave me for not being there at the end. My family certainly didn't. I knew she was sick, but I just …" Patty shook her head, squeezed Luke's arm and pulled away. "But they're not your family, and your father wanted this for you. No one blames you for making the choices that you did, least of all him. Now, I need to get back to the meeting."

Luke watched as Patty slid the door closed behind her, and he heard Taylor call the meeting to order. He was the only one on the sidewalk now, everyone else either inside the dance studio or at home. He walked up to the door and laid a hand on it, pressing his forehead to the smooth wood. It wasn't too late. He was willing to bet that Lorelai had a seat saved for him just in case.

"Next on the agenda, approval of the licenses for the business applying to occupy the former William's Hardware …"

Luke pushed away, backing up several paces before turning his back on the meeting. He glanced at his watch as he walked to his truck. He had just enough time to go fight a duel.

* * *

It didn't surprise Lorelai that Luke fled the meeting. What did was the sheer fact that he had been there at all, but she wished he just hadn't come. It left her fielding awkward questions from Rory, ones that she couldn't just brush away with "he had to go back to Boston." So she did just that, reminding her that he had told them good-bye at breakfast that morning.

But as far as good-byes went, it had been just as awkward as everything else since they returned to Stars Hollow the evening before. Rory was chattering about reading and school supply lists, reminding her that they were going shopping in Hartford the next afternoon for her remaining school supplies. Which meant the jig was up regarding Chilton. Lorelai would have to tell Rory and break her heart. But she would do it the morning. Definitely in the morning. Waiting until tomorrow worked for Scarlett O'Hara, right?

Rory bounded off to bed to get a head start on her reading list, and Lorelai made herself a pot of coffee. She sat at the table staring listlessly into her cup, not wanting to deal with any of it. She didn't want to think about her relationship. She didn't want to think about Chilton. Then there were her parents, and that was still a huge question mark in and of itself. Maybe she would just curl up and watch a movie instead. Actually, Gone With the Wind sounded like a really good idea.

When the knock came at the back door, she was half-expecting Sookie, who had spent all day pestering her about coming clean with Rory over Chilton. It was a good chance it was also Babette, who had commented on Luke's absence from the meeting.

But when Lorelai saw him through the window, she reared back in shock. She abandoned her coffee and slipped outside, closing the door behind her. She leaned against it, ready to take Luke to task. But he seemed to sense she was going to lay into him, because he started first.

"Rory in bed?" Luke nodded toward the house.

"Yeah, though she'll probably be reading the next few hours." Lorelai folded her arms over her chest, nursing her anger. "I thought you went back."

"No. I was just figuring something out." Luke stared at the porch. Lorelai also stared at the porch. A little battered, could use paint, but a perfectly ordinary porch.

"And that something happens to be the ground?"

"No, no, not the ground." Luke shoved his hands in his back pocket, rocking back on his heels. "Are you comfortable leaving her for a few minutes?"

Well, if they were going to fight, it was probably best not to do it in Rory's earshot. "Yeah."

Lorelai ducked back inside long enough to leave a note for Rory in case she emerged from her bedroom, then rejoined him. They walked in silence toward the center of town. But on the edge of the square, Luke turned a corner and started heading in a different direction.

"Where are we headed?" she asked.

"Cemetery." Luke nodded to the iron gates about a block away.

Lorelai's brow furrowed. "OK, do you have some sort of death fetish you're not telling me about?"

He rolled his eyes at her. "No."

If his plan was to walk until she was no longer angry, well … it was partially working. Lorelai started slotting the pieces together as they slipped inside the wrought-iron gates and headed toward the middle of the cemetery. It was a section she had visited before, a grave she had taken Rory quite a bit at her daughter's request as she grew up. It felt strange to be before William Danes' grave in the night, and even weirder to not have the flowers that Rory insisted on bringing every time they went.

Bill had been Rory's first experience with death, but not her last. As Rory had grown and older townspeople had died off, she insisted on bringing tiny flower bouquets so they wouldn't be forgotten. With a pang of sadness, Lorelai realized the last time they had done this was a couple years earlier, before Rory got swept into teenage life.

Luke stood next to her, tall and rigid, not saying a word. For a moment, she wondered if he was even breathing. When his hand reached for hers, she laced her fingers through his and squeezed. As fractured as things were with her parents, they were at least still alive. His own had been gone for years now.

"You said you ran away from home with Rory," he said.

Lorelai nodded. "Yeah."

Luke closed his eyes. "I did too."

She smirked. "You ran away from home with Rory?"

"No," he said with a half-laugh, and some of that rigidness drained out of him. "I ran from my dad."

Lorelai's head snapped around as she gaped at him, but his attention was still focused on the grave. "I got drafted out of high school. You usually don't go straight into the major league team. You usually spend a couple of years playing with minor league teams. They call it farming. You start as a rookie, work your way up. I played minor league for three seasons. I first went down to North Carolina. I'd only been out of the state a couple times and never in the Deep South. God, I couldn't wait to get back."

"The next year, I was back up here in Connecticut, over in New Britain. I was close enough to home that I just moved back in with my dad and helped out when I could. He was looking tired, but to me he had always seemed tired since my mom died. I don't think he ever fully recovered from that."

Lorelai's focus tracked to the other grave sharing the plot with Bill, an older one that showed the occupant had died in the mid-1970s. She did a hasty calculation and shivered. Luke's mother been in her mid-30s when she died, just barely older than Lorelai was now.

"Then in '87, I went to Rhode Island," Luke continued. "Dad had a doctor's appointment right before I left, but I was so focused on finding a place to live and training that I didn't realize he never told me what the outcome was. Three months later, Boston called me up. During the off-season, Dad admitted he had cancer."

Lorelai had learned enough about baseball to know that the off-season was during the winter months. Which meant Bill found out he had cancer not long before she and Rory had found the baseball card on the sidewalk. The card that was still in her wallet, still tucked behind her driver's license.

"We had this awful fight, because he kept the news from me. He didn't want me quitting to take care of him. Some folks in town made no secret of the fact they felt I should put my dad and the town first."

"Taylor included?"

"Yeah, though he's always had an eye on my dad's store." Luke shook his head. "I visited during that first year, but the sicker he got, the more I stayed away. I couldn't stand to see him become a shell of himself. I watched my mom die and just … hell, some therapist would have a field day with me. I just kept playing, and Dad never asked me to come home. He knew if he did that I would." He closed his eyes. "I wasn't there when he died. Neither of us were. Liz was off god-knows-where, and I was doing some sort of conditioning exercise. I didn't even go home for Thanksgiving. We talked on the phone, but …"

Luke dropped her hand so he could pace. "Every time I come here, every time I think of this town, I remember how I just stayed away. I didn't have the balls to come face my dad. If I wasn't here, he wasn't dying, that's how I thought of it. When I came for the funeral, it felt like everyone was judging me. Except Mia. I don't think I could have gotten through it without Mia."

Sympathy filled her. Lorelai remembered the days after his father's death, how everyone in town seemed to act just a bit differently, how Mia had cried when she thought no one was looking. "Rory and I didn't go to the funeral. She was just five, and explaining your dad's death was hard enough. That was the first time Mia let me run the front desk by myself. We brought flowers." She wished she had some now.

"I come here now, and I don't … I don't hate it anymore. I don't want to run away. It's because of you." For the first time since appearing at her back door that night, Luke's eyes met her own. It took everything inside her not to reach for him, to hold him until she could convince him that everything was OK. "For the longest town, all Stars Hollow represented was my dad. But now it's you." "I'm sorry about Chilton."

"It's not your fault."

"Yeah, it is. If we hadn't began dating, she would never know about you or Rory to begin with."

"We'll figure something out. We always have."

Luke opened his mouth, started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. Or maybe he just couldn't bear to look at her, because he simply turned away. "What if … what if we broke up?"

Everything inside Lorelai went cold. "Excuse me, _what_?"

He whirled around. "Anna's family retaliated against me using you. That's what Anna wants … what they want, right? To make me miserable for taking my money and leaving because I wouldn't give into her. We break up, Anna gets what she wants, and maybe Chilton will change its mind."

She gaped at him. "I can't believe the complete and utter stupidity that's coming out of your mouth at the moment."

"Rory won't be able to go to Hartford, and it's because you met me!" Luke jabbed his thumb at his chest as he spoke. "Look, I'm not operating under any illusions here. I stayed away from Stars Hollow because I was a fuck up when it came to my dad, and I won't let that spread to you and Rory."

"This is not the answer!"

"Then what other answer is there?" Luke flung his arm back out toward the town. "This is your life! You gave up everything to make a home for Rory. How can I possibly rip you from this?"

"You can because I love you! We'll make it work."

Luke gripped her arms. "I won't have you waking up one day resenting me because you gave up everything for me." The words sounded like he was ripping them out of the depths of his soul, and hurling them at her with the speed of his fastest curveball. Before Lorelai could even think of a response, he was kissing her. With everything she had, she kissed him back, pouring all the love and hurt and desperation she felt into that single moment.

 _Please don't leave me._

The kiss ended on a gentle sigh, but she wasn't sure if it was from her or him. He ran his thumb over the apple of her cheek before stepping back into a thin strip of light, tears in his eyes. Luke swallowed hard. "I love you," he said hoarsely. "I want you to be happy."

Then he turned his back on her and walked away.

The next morning, Headmaster Charleston called Lorelai to inform her that Rory would be allowed to attend Chilton.

* * *

 _Author's note: One more chapter to go! I am so sorry it took so long to get this posted. I wound up completely scrapping the original ending back in August and have been rewriting the last two chapters in tandem ever since, along with the epilogue. I am much happier with the end result, and I hope you enjoy it as well!_


	16. Chapter 15

_Six weeks later_

The loneliness was an old friend. Luke was well used to it. The sheer absence of it over the summer had been a bigger shock than the abrupt end to his relationship with Lorelai. It was his own fault. He had craved love and laughter from the moment he had squeezed next to her in that cursed town meeting, and despite knowing it was going to end in pain, he threw himself in anyhow. Hell, he had believed for a small, shining moment that he actually had a good future. It would be him, her, Rory, and whoever came along, and they would be happy.

He never told anyone that during one away game trip, he found himself looking at engagement rings in a jewelry store window.

But that had been before, and this was now. What he wanted didn't matter. What did was that Rory had gotten into Chilton, and then she was going to Harvard or whatever damn school she wanted. What mattered what that Lorelai would be able to fulfill the dreams she had been building she was a teenage mom, fleeing home with a baby to make her way in the world.

What mattered was that Lorelai was happy.

Luke handled it the same way he handled his father's death and the entire mess with Anna: he threw himself into his work. His performance skyrocketed, just like the previous times his life had been upended. As the Red Sox moved further into playoffs, Cy Young rumors grew stronger, and he cared for none of it. He punished himself at the gym and took to sleeping on the couch, because he could barely face his bed. God, he was acting like they had been together for years, not weeks, but his stupid heart refused to accept logic.

One of those sleepless nights in mid-October, he stared at the ceiling, listened as the door between the two halves of the duplex opened. He heard Liz's heavy tread as she tried her best to creep across the room. He squeezed his eyes shut, pretending to sleep. He felt her standing over him, then she leaned over and ran a hand through his hair.

The move simply undid him.

He blinked his eyes open, hating that Liz was blurry, because it meant the tears he had been ignoring for weeks would no longer go away.

"You're an idiot," Liz said with great sisterly wisdom.

Luke snorted and brushed away the tears and responded with the best of sibling retorts. "Sticks and stones can break my bones …"

Liz tugged at his hair sharply.

"Ow, stop that!" In retaliation, his hand snaked out to tickle her. She howled, tugged again. So he retaliated in the best way a brother could retaliate.

He started a pillow fight.

"Are you two a little old for hair pulling and pillow fights?" Jess asked from the doorway.

It was on the tip of Luke's tongue to retort that Liz had started it. But upon seeing her satisfied smirk, he realized that had been her intention all along. He sat up and reached for the lamp switch. "Why are you two over here?"

Liz sat in the spot where his legs had been. "Because you're my brother and you're miserable."

"I didn't have any other choice, Liz."

Liz waved a dismissive hand. "Sure you had other choices. Look, I did a tarot reading, and there were six alternate routes you could have …"

"And none of them would had led to Chilton!" Luke cut in before Liz could veer further down the sacred road of the tarot. "Every other possible solution would had involved Lorelai and Rory picking up their lives to suit me. You have no idea how much Lorelai sacrificed to give Rory the life that they have." Then he remembered exactly who he was talking to and nearly smacked his own forehead. "And that was an asshole thing to say."

Jess smirked. "You're being a very good role model right now, Uncle Luke."

"Jess, bed," Liz said, pointing at the door.

Jess shrugged and leaned against it. "I'm collecting fodder for my future memoirs. Or therapy sessions if you really want to get technical with it."

"Luke," Liz said in her best sibling voice, deciding to ignore her son in favor of her brother. "You're going to let Anna do this to you for the rest of your life?"

"What choice do I have?" he snapped at her, then stared firmly at the carpet, no longer wanting to hear any of it.

"Stop being a victim?" Jess asked.

"You're not helping, Jess," Liz told him.

Jess shrugged. "I'm just calling it like I see it. I'm going to bed."

Liz waited until the door closed behind Jess before trying again. She absently rubbed Luke's knee. "Look, you know we love you, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

"You'd done the same for Jess, wouldn't you?"

He met her gaze, nodded. "Yeah."

"That's why you're a good person. You're much too good to let someone like Anna Nardini keep doing this to you. None of this is hurting her. You don't even matter to her. Jess has got a point. Every moment you're a victim, you're letting her win." Liz squeezed his knee and got to her feet.

Luke followed, letting the blanket he'd been wrapped in pool at his feet. "You sound like a self-help book."

"Guess what your birthday present is this year?" Liz hugged him. "Try to get some sleep."

Luke nodded as he walked her to the door and she wished him a good night. For a moment, he considered locking it behind her. Then shook his head as he lay back down to contemplate the ceiling once more.

 _Stop being a victim._

Something about Jess' words crawled around the inside of his skull, ants on an endless march, worse than any earworm of a song.

The more Luke thought about it, the more he felt like a prime jackass. Because somewhere there was an alternate solution to this mess, and maybe it didn't have to involve Lorelai moving or pulling Rory out of Chilton. Instead of figuring one out, he had walked away. Liz was right. He was allowing the ghost of Anna Nardini to haunt him … much like his guilt over not being there when his father died. He had been able to let it go, to accept Stars Hollow for what it was. Why couldn't he with this?

Then the answer hit him, startling him out of the doze he had fallen into. There was definitely one way he could fix this, and Lorelai and Rory wouldn't have to give up a damn thing. He felt his heart pounding, hot and hard against his rib cage. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like the right thing to do. The only thing.

Luke tossed back the blanket and made his way over to the piles of paper on the dining room table. Some were new, but there was one particular set of documents he had let linger the entire summer. He fished them out, absently flipping through them as he walked to the small table that held the portable phone and answering machine. He yanked open the drawer.

It was full of small answering machine tapes, painstakingly labeled by the day. He found the one he was looking for, popped it in the machine, and pressed play.

 _"Hi. Um … Hi! My name is Lorelai Gilmore and don't delete this, please, please don't delete this. I'm not some salesman or kooky fan or crazy stalker, but now I do sound like a crazy stalker and just forget the last 10 seconds, OK? Right. I'm Lorelai Gilmore, and I live in Stars Hollow, where you once lived. No, I'm not trying to rope you into some charity function or-"_

Luke listened to the tapes until dawn.

As soon as the clock in the kitchen hit 8 a.m., he called his lawyer.

* * *

Lorelai slumped over a mug of coffee in the Independence Inn's kitchen, refusing to even look at the worktable that Sookie had wanted to bronze. She really wanted to avoid the place altogether, and her desire for coffee just barely edged reliving for the millionth time what she and Luke had done on said worktable months earlier.

Sookie shot her a sympathetic look from across the table as she started lunch prep. "Oh, sweetie, is it that bad?"

"I had at least three stray cats following me into work this morning. They know, Sookie, they know. I'm a young, desirable woman, but clearly I am headed for spinster crazy cat lady status. Not that I'm interested in dating anyone at the moment."

"Cats aren't all bad," Sookie pointed out. "Unless they're owned by Kirk."

"There was a reason Taylor had that ordinance passed that prohibits Kirk from owning anything other than a pig."

Sookie fell silent as Lorelai sipped at her coffee. "It's been what … six weeks now, right?"

Six weeks, two days, and 19 hours. Not that Lorelai was counting or anything.

"You didn't really date that long," Sookie continued.

"I know, it's just …" Her vocabulary, fast and furious at any other time, failed her. Quipping, that was easy. Tapping into real emotions, even for her best friend, was rough. "I feel like he could have been the one."

"I know, honey. But he did it for Rory. It's the only reason I'm not angry at him. I'm not saying that it wasn't stupid. Because it was," Sookie quickly added. "But clearly Luke must had thought he had no other choice."

Lorelai carried her coffee to the back door, looking out over the inn's expansive lawns to the potter's shed that had once been her home. According to Headmaster Charleston, E.R. Collingswood had suddenly relented and told the board to allow Rory Gilmore into Chilton, and Lorelai suspected that Luke had offered their relationship as the proverbial sacrifice. It was something her parents had confirmed when they suddenly showed up in Stars Hollow a few days later.

"Bitty Charleston told me that Luke apparently went back to Collingswood and offered to break up with you if he would convince the board to let Rory back into Chilton," Emily explained when Rory was out of earshot, showing her books to Richard.

"But why would us breaking up cause him to change his mind?" Lorelai asked.

Emily hadn't responded, and instead merely criticized the assorted mix of knick-knacks the girls had collected for the fireplace mantel.

Richard had been the one to provide insight.

"There is no greater measure of a man than his ability to sacrifice himself for his loved ones, especially his children," Richard told Lorelai as she walked them to their car. "Luke could choose his happiness, or he could choose Rory's future. He chose her future, and to be quite honest with you, I would think much less of him had he made any other choice."

Therein lay all the heartbreak. Luke had chosen Rory's future over them. It was frustrating and it made her want to scream, because there _had_ to be another way without resorting to breaking up. He took the choice away from her … but she knew deep in her heart that as much as everything _hurt_ , she would make the same choice he had. Stupid, noble jerk.

One weirdly strange, but somewhat good thing happened out of the breakup, and that was Lorelai's parents deciding to start burying the hatchet. And the hatchet wasn't embedded in Lorelai's chest. On Friday nights, Lorelai and Rory ventured to the Gilmore mansion in Hartford for dinner. It wasn't exactly an easy, comfortable thing to get through. Emily still made biting remarks, and Richard wasn't happy with Lorelai's choices. But they adored Rory and lavished attention on her. It was that relationship alone that made Lorelai decide to put up with the dinners.

Lorelai drifted through the day like she had all the others for the previous six weeks, willing herself to lift through the fog for Rory's sake. She got home before Rory, who was volunteering for the Franklin newspaper at Chilton. It was enough time for her to consider dinner options. Al's had a new special, though Lorelai wasn't sure lo mein was ever meant to be that shade of neon pink. Well, you only lived once. Cesar was in the testing phase before opening the diner, and both Gilmores were eager taste testers. Or she could order in pizza. It wasn't too late to go back to the inn and get leftovers.

Actually cooking never crossed Lorelai's mind.

Lorelai opened the freezer and studied the array of frozen dinners. Oooh, Stouffers. She could heat a lasagna without burning the kitchen down. She had just put the tray on the counter when the front door burst open.

"Hey, kid, you're home early," Lorelai commented as she opened the box, then looked up as Rory stormed into the kitchen. Her daughter was practically vibrating with fury as she threw her book bag to the ground. "Whoa, what happened? That Paris girl get to you again?"

"How could you not tell me that I didn't get into Chilton?" Rory demanded.

Lorelai's stomach plummeted, going past her feet and lodging somewhere in the Earth's crust. "Have you looked in the mirror lately, because you're wearing what appears to be a Chilton uniform. I dropped you off at a very Chilton-looking building this morning."

"Don't try to be cutesy!" Rory stomped over to the table and threw herself in a chair. "Why didn't you tell me this is the reason you and Luke broke up?"

Shit, shit, _shit._ "OK, kid. Tell me what you know."

"I think you should tell me what _you_ know."

"Rory." Lorelai abandoned the frozen meal and sat across from her. "Yes, you were kicked out of Chilton for an entire 48 hours. How did you find out?"

"Paris," Rory spat and leaned forward to rest her arms on the table. "Apparently, everyone in school knows that I got kicked out because you and Luke were dating. Is that true?"

Lorelai reached across for one of Rory's hands, relieved when she didn't yank it away. "Yeah. It's true. One of the board members is Anna Nardini's godfather. He still hated Luke for walking away from Anna and April all those years ago."

Rory shook her head. "But he isn't April's father."

"Didn't matter. Her family sees it as him walking away from his responsibilities. So Anna's godfather was extremely petty and took it out on you. Luke went to him and offered to break up with me, and in exchange, you would get back into Chilton. Anna's godfather agreed."

Lorelai waited as Rory mulled over the situation, trying to puzzle it out. "What does he get out of it?"

"Control. The chance to make Luke pay for what happened."

"He didn't do anything wrong!"

Lorelai shrugged. "He made some bad dating choices, and that's basically it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Rory's voice sounded small and hurt, and Lorelai knew she had violated the best friend policy that had always existed between them.

"We didn't want you to worry. Sweets, you've been wanting to go to Chilton since you started middle school."

Rory pulled her hand away and got up to pick up her book bag. "Maybe I don't want to go anymore."

Lorelai gaped at her. "You don't want to be in Chilton?"

Rory hugged the book bag to her chest. "I hate the students. Paris Gellar is a huge pain. I love the classes though, and my teachers. But Mom, you're not happy. And you didn't give me a choice. You told me before that the whole trust thing goes both ways, and you didn't trust me enough to have a say in my future. You lied to me!"

"By omission!" Lorelai protested.

"Technicality!"

Lorelai sighed. "Rory, we were in a no-win situation."

"You don't know that, because you didn't let me have a say in it," Rory retorted.

Lorelai hadn't had much of a say herself, but that was semantics. "Fine, what would you have chosen? To stay in Stars Hollow High longer? For us to move to Boston and leave Stars Hollow? To go to my old school, which probably had that scarlet 'A' tattooed on you before you even looked at the front door. What do you want, Rory?"

For the first time since storming into the kitchen, Rory hesitated. She bit her bottom lip hesitantly. "I don't know," she admitted.

"And there's the rub."

Rory buried her face in the book bag for a moment, speaking more to it than to Lorelai. "I really like him, Mom. He made you so happy."

"We made each other very happy." Lorelai felt the tears battling their way to the surface, and she pushed them back. She took one breath, then another before deciding it was safe to speak. "He did it because he loves you, Rory. Don't ever think that he didn't. He loved you enough to give you a future."

"Is it too late to return it?"

* * *

Lorelai spent the latest in a long line of sleepless nights wandering through the Crap Shack, looking at the home she and Rory had made. When she couldn't walk another step, she collapsed on the couch with her wallet. She fished the baseball card out of its safe spot and stared at her baseball guy until tears clouded her vision.

Luke had given up his happiness for her and Rory. What was she prepared to give up?

She wasn't sure.

The question plagued her as she headed to the inn the next day, working a Saturday shift so Rory could spend a quiet morning at home getting ahead on her schoolwork. Their argument has been left at an impasse. While they were polite with each other, Lorelai knew that Rory was throughly pissed that her wishes hadn't been sought at all.

She went through the motions, escaping to her office as quickly as she could under the pretext of catching up on paperwork. Instead, she spent a solid hour absently doodling on a legal pad until she hurled the pen across the room.

Screw it.

Rory was right. There was another way. There was always another way somewhere. The Gilmores were queens of finding the road not taken.

Lorelai yanked open her desk drawer, snatching her purse from where she stashed it. She was going to Boston. She was going to plant herself in Luke's house and not leave until they came to a decision. Together.

Her definition of home now included him, and she wasn't coming back until he was with her.

Lorelai took out the baseball card out of its safe spot in her wallet and gave it a quick kiss. "I'm coming to get you, baseball guy," she told it, and tucked it away.

She strode out of her office at the same time Sookie rushed into the lobby, her face pale.

"Soufflé fall?" Michel asked absently from the desk as he paged through the guestbook. "Drop a pint of blueberries in the compost again?"

Sookie ignored him, her focus on Lorelai. "Sweetie, have you heard the news?"

Something cold settled in Lorelai's stomach. "What news?"

"It's Luke."

Her heart nearly stopped as every baseball injury she ever heard about flooded into her head all at once. "Oh my God. Is he hurt?"

"No. He just announced that he's retiring."

* * *

Lorelai hadn't needed to go very far to find Luke.

All she needed was to go home.

The familiar battered green truck sat in the driveway off to the side, like it belonged there. Like he did. It was such a shock that it took her a moment to really process it.

Then she smelled the coffee.

Rory wandered onto the front porch, holding an oversized mug and wearing the very best of shit-eating grins.

"What is this?" Lorelai asked, surprised she could hear herself over the pounding of her heart.

"See for yourself. I'm off to see Lane." Humming under her breath, Rory took a slip of coffee and sauntered down the sidewalk. She pivoted to walk backwards. "I can stay the night if you want."

"What makes you so sure about that?"

"Because, I know a man in prime groveling mode when I see it." Rory raised her mug in salute and continued on her way to Lane's.

Lorelai slowly entered the house, sniffing every few steps like a bloodhound. There wasn't just coffee. She could smell pie. And brownies. And that amazing lemon pull-apart bread. And things that weren't loaded with sugar. She wandered into the kitchen, freezing just inside the doorway.

Every surface was covered with some sort of food dish or baked good. Clearly taster elves named Rory Gilmore had been hard at work, because some of them had pieces missing. It was _all_ her favorite foods.

And it wasn't just the food. She was absolutely sure the table had been wobbling when she left that morning. It wasn't any longer. A new lightbulb shone in the fixture above the sink.

She almost believed that an army of maids had finally invaded her home to do her bidding, but then there was the man standing in the middle of all the chaos, anxiously tossing a dish rag from hand to hand.

And he looked ready to bolt.

"OK," Lorelai said slowly, putting her purse down on the only empty spot on the table. "Is this your way of groveling? Because if it is, it's proving effective."

"I don't know, I just …" Luke raised his hands and let them fall. "Look, Liz said to do some sort of big romantic gesture, and Jess said to do some sort of big romantic gesture, and Rory said to make sure whatever the gesture was that it included coffee. I don't know how to do these things, so I went to the book shop and Andrew gave me some romance novels. And they were filled with all this crap like fist-sized diamonds. Why would anyone want a fist-sized diamond? This other book had things called lifemates, but really they were vampires, and I'm not sucking your blood. But you love food, though half of this stuff is gonna kill you, so I thought maybe if I made you enough food to get you through Y2K, maybe you'll let me apologize for being an ass."

Lorelai breathed in. Out. In. Then she did the most unlike-Lorelai Gilmore thing ever.

She didn't say a word.

Luke was certain he'd blown it.

Groveling was an entirely new experience for him. His high school relationship with Rachel had ended amicably, with him heading off to his career and her to hers. Ending things with Anna had been the equivalent of hurling a grenade behind him as he sped away as fast as he could. He wasn't any good at reconciling, simply because he hadn't done it. Maybe that should had been the advice he asked from Liz instead of romantic gestures.

"You're retiring?" Lorelai finally asked.

OK, that was better than yelling. He nodded. "Yeah."

"Why?"

Luke found himself studying the scuffed linoleum. It had originally come from the hardware store sometime ago, because he recognized the pattern from sometime in the 70s. He might be able to track it down, replace it for her, and …

 _Use actual words, you idiot_.

Shit. He wasn't any good at this. Words were something Lorelai excelled at, not him.

Luke dropped into a chair and stared at his hands. They were large hands, calloused from years of handling a ball. It took every ounce of courage he had to look at her.

"I've always been my career. Even when I was a kid, people looked at me and just saw my potential as a ball player. And that was fine, because it's what got me through the day. Everything else was just smoke. I told you that there's not a lot of people who see me for who I really am. Liz and Jess. Couple others. But first and foremost, they still see the career, even if they don't realize it."

He flexed his hands, not quite sure what to do with them. "But you … you never saw any of that. You saw through the bullshit and made me realize that I was still hidden in there somewhere. I asked you if you were scared, but hell, I was the scared one." "Maybe I should ask one of the kids for one of their psychology textbooks."

Lorelai slowly sat across from him. "You're retiring for me."

"I'm retiring for _me_. I'll be 34 in a couple months. Peak age for pitchers is in their late 20s. With each game I play, the chances of me either winding down or being injured increase. I don't want to retire because I'm hurt or I'm sidelined because of my age. I think it's time to find out what else is out there." Luke shrugged. "So, after next season, I'm moving back to Stars Hollow. Not sure where yet or what the hell I'm gonna do, but I think it's time to come home."

He pushed to his feet. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for running away. I should had fought Anna's family and found another way." "I love you, and I'm not going to stop loving you. Before you, I was just existing. But then I met you, and now life isn't real to me unless you're in it. But if you want nothing to do with me, I understand. If you don't want me to move here, I won't. All this," Luke waved at the food around them, "I just wanted to say I was sorry for being an ass. And, well. I guess I should go."

It was all he could do. The decision was in her hands. He wouldn't force her to make her feel a certain way or guilt her into feeling obligated to resume their relationship. He turned toward the door, ordering himself to not let her see him quietly dying inside.

Lorelai looked up at him. "Luke, will you marry me?"

Luke whipped around. "What?"

Her eyes were luminous, a bit wide with shock. It was clear that she hadn't expected to say what she had, and he waited for the words to register. More precisely, he was waiting for her to take them back. Instead, she pushed back from the table and slowly got to her feet. She wore some sort of black dress with pink flowers, a matching cardigan making the ensemble look enchanting. As she stood, the shock was replaced with a firm clarity.

"Will you marry-"

"Yes." The words burst out of his own mouth of their own volition.

Lorelai blinked once. Twice. "Well, you don't have to answer, so …"

"Yes," Luke repeated with deliberation, because it was the only acceptable answer.

"We can take a minute to …"

"No!"

Then he did the only thing he could do. The entirely predictable thing. He kissed her. She was laughing and crying in his arms, and he didn't think anything of the tears rolling down his own cheeks. They still had hurdles to fling themselves over, but this was right. Other than making the decision to retire, it was the most right thing he had ever done.

They ended the kiss, and she laid her head on his chest, her ear pressing against his heart. They stayed that way for a few minutes, content to simply reconnect on the most basic level.

"You still have a lot of groveling to do," Lorelai murmured.

Luke nodded and nuzzled the top of her head. "I know."

She looked up at him. "You need to use a lot of words."

"I know." He pressed his forehead to hers. "Maybe it's time I see a therapist."

She jerked back in shock. "Whoa."

"I'll still have the team resources available to me, so I can start there. I thought about it a lot. Therapy just isn't something we've done much in my family, but Liz did it after she moved in with me. Tried to get me to go, but …" Luke shrugged.

"We certainly don't do that in my family. We repress everything, and we refuse to go to therapy, because why tell a stranger your problems, when you can use them to punish those around you?" Lorelai shook her head. "Maybe it's time I see one too. Just not with my mother. Because oh boy, that could cause issues." She resumed her place, nestled against his heart. "So, you're going to therapy, and we're getting married."

He absently ran a hand through her hair, curly today. It was a style he loved. "Don't forget about the retirement part."

Lorelai poked his chest. "You're really gonna need a shrink, pal."

"You realize they'll probably kick Rory out of Chilton again."

"She knows, by the way. She's mad we didn't give her a choice."

"I know. She told me."

Lorelai eased back to look up at him. "Really?"

"Really. She's a good kid. We spent awhile talking while waiting for you to get off work. I promised her we would all talk this through."

Like a family. It was strange and weird. But, it was also very, very right. Hell, he'd toss Jess and Liz into the conversation. They would have an opinion or six.

Lorelai turned in his arms, pressing her back into his chest as she surveyed the bounty he had made for her.

"So, this is enough food to get me through the next couple of hours. How're you going to handle the next 50 years or so?"

Luke laughed and kissed the nape of her neck. "You really are a piece of work, you know that?" But she was _his_ piece of work, and for the first time since he was a child, he felt like he was finally home.

* * *

 _Author's note: All we have left is an epilogue! That should be going up sometime this week._


	17. Epilogue

_Epilogue: September 2009_

The Dragonfly Inn was on the outskirts of Stars Hollow, and it was a very pretty property. The building had to be at least a century old, if not older. It was a bit smaller than the Independence Inn on the other side of town, but the Dragonfly made her think of quaint bed and breakfasts that she read about in books.

The taxi driver, a local named Kirk who didn't hesitate to give her a complete rundown of the town, its inhabitants, and the latest gossip, offered to carry her large checked bag inside. She let him carry it up the stairs, but rolled it in herself.

The lobby was small, but welcoming. The front desk, made of some sort of reclaimed wood, stood off to one side. A woman stood behind the counter, her dark hair hanging loose in cascading waves. She absently hummed beneath her breath as she sorted through the bills in her hands. Her smile was as welcoming as the lobby as she looked up.

"Hi! Welcome to the Dragonfly. I'm Lorelai." Lorelai put the mail down and turned to the computer. "Do you have a reservation?"

"Not exactly." She worried her lip. "You're Lorelai Gilmore?"

"Last time I looked in the mirror! I figured tomorrow, I'd be Marilyn Monroe." Lorelai winked at her, and the nerves in her stomach unknotted. "You're in luck, because we just had a cancellation. How many nights do you want to-"

"I'm looking for Luke Danes," she blurted.

Lorelai's fingers froze over the keyboard. She took a closer look at her, recognition dawning. "I suppose you are," she said. "One sec, OK?" She pulled her cellphone out of her skirt pocket.

She watched as Lorelai took a few steps away, murmuring into her phone. It took no more than a minute before Lorelai was turning back to her. Lorelai came around the desk, taking her arm as she gently led her to one of the couches.

"He's on the way with the kids," she said. "They just got out of school. He'll be here in a few minutes."

"Oh." Not sure what else to do, she toyed with the tag on her luggage. "How many kids do you have?"

"Three. Our oldest got out of Harvard a couple years ago and is working as an assistant editor with Condé Nast. The others are in elementary school."

Siblings were a complete mystery to her, but she knew social niceties enough to nod. "That's nice."

She watched as Lorelai went back behind the desk, fingers flying over the computer before taking a key off a board. She waved a bellhop over, pointed to the bag and gave a room before walking back across the lobby.

"Here." Lorelai handed the key over.

She stared at it in shock. "I can stay?"

Lorelai's smile was gentle. "I was your age when I left home. I didn't know where to go. Someone handed me a room key. Just do the same thing for someone else some day."

Her hand clutched the key like a lifeline. "Thank you."

Their attention was pulled to the sound of pounding feet. The front door burst open, revealing a little girl who was almost the spitting image of her mother. She bounced up and down eagerly.

"Did Michel bring the dogs today?" she asked eagerly.

"No, he did not," Lorelai replied firmly.

"Room 4, Lydia," Michel called out from Lorelai's office.

"Michel!" Lorelai yelled as Lydia squealed with joy and took off toward the stairs just as Luke walked in.

"Where's Liam?" Lorelai asked.

"Stables," Luke told Lorelai before turning his attention to her. Her palms went damp as he approached her.

He was her salvation.

"April?" he asked.

April Nardini nodded, managing a weak smile. "Hi."

* * *

She was one of the last people he ever expected to see.

Luke hadn't quite believed it when Lorelai called and told him that April was sitting in the lobby of the Dragonfly, looking like she had nowhere to go.

He loathed entertainment gossip, but Lorelai and Rory ate it up like there was no tomorrow. With Rory working at Condé Nast, they had a primary source for getting the latest scoop. It had been through Rory that they found out that April Nardini had filed for emancipation the day after her 16th birthday. He had no doubt that April had experienced a miserable childhood. He wondered if she ever learned who her birth father was.

He had enough parenting experience under his belt now that handling an anxious teen should be a breeze, but he still wasn't quite sure how to manage this. Some tiny part of him, a part that was still battered from the events from 16 years earlier, worried that Anna would make his life hell as a result of April showing up. He acknowledged the thought, then quickly dismiss it. April was a kid in need, and he would help her the way he couldn't all those years before.

But for now, he needed details. He gestured to the chair caddy-corner to the couch, and April nodded.

"I guess you heard," she said as he sat.

"Bits and pieces." His smile was wry. "I really don't keep track of your mother."

"Well, that makes two of us."

Luke shook his head, not bothering to fight the grin. April giggled, just a bit before sobering.

"I just wanted to thank you," she told him. "I didn't know about the trust. I saved money where I could, and I knew I had a Coogan account I could tap to pay the lawyer once the emancipation went through. When the emancipation went through, there was another lawyer at the courthouse. I thought he dealt with my Coogan account, but then he said he represented you and told me about the trust. The money in my Coogan was enough to break free, but this … I can lead my own life. So, I don't know, I just booked a plane ticket and well …" April dragged in a breath. "Do you mind if I hug you?"

Before he could reply, she launched herself into his arms. Her thin shoulders shook as she sobbed into the flannel shirt he wore. He looked over his shoulder at Lorelai, who had tears in her own eyes.

He patted April's back. "It'll be all right," he soothed. "Everything's going to be fine."

And he was right.

* * *

 _Coda: November 2009_

It never got easier.

Luke tilted his face to the sky. Twenty years. It should be easier, and for the most part, the pain was buried. But every year, on a particular day, it came rushing back. The grief and the guilt.

This year, the anniversary of his father's death fell on the same day as an off-season event where retired players were invited back to Fenway Park with their families so they could spend time with fans willing to donate a hefty amount to charity. He really wasn't that fond of these types of events, but the children had begged to go.

They had been in the stadium less than five minutes before Lydia was pulling Luke toward the gates leading to the field, the protective covering pulled back for the evening.

Lydia ran out ahead of him to the mound, bouncing on it with all the energy her 5-year-old self could muster. "This is where you played, Daddy!"

"Yeah, it is." Luke headed to one of the dugouts and found a basket filled with baseballs sitting outside it. He selected a couple then joined his sports-crazy daughter on the mound. There were other players milling about, and somewhere in the crowds was Lorelai, their studious 7-year-old son Liam, … and April Nardini.

April had decided to stay in Stars Hollow. She wound up enrolling at Chilton, based on Rory's recommendation. Rory had managed to graduate from Chilton after all, aided by a little bit of luck that had happened two weeks after he and Lorelai got engaged. They kept the engagement under wraps as the three of them debated over what to do. Then fate intervened when Anna's godfather died of a heart attack. With that last barrier gone, they announced their wedding, and Rory remained at Chilton.

They stayed in the Crap Shack, enlarging it to add two more bedrooms as first Liam, then Lydia came along. Alliteration was strong in the family, and Rory fondly called them the four Ls and a Rory (though Lorelai often reminded Rory that she, too, had an L-name.) The year before Lydia was born, the Dragonfly Inn opened as a combined investment among Lorelai, Sookie, Luke, Michel, and Sookie's produce guy that she married not long before Liam's birth. Luke spent his retirement doing odd jobs for the inn, taking care of the children, and helping Cesar every so often in the diner.

And now, with Rory off on her own, April had moved into her room.

They hadn't heard a single peep from Anna, and April never talked about her other than to admit during Thanksgiving that this was the first time she had ever really felt like part of a family.

"Daddy!"

Luke's attention swung back to Lydia, who looked very much like her mother in peak coffee-demanding mode. He dropped to his knees, hugging her from behind. "Hey, do you want to do what I did before games?"

Lydia craned her neck to look at him. "What's that?"

"So, a lot of players do things for good luck to make sure things go well during the game. Mine was to write my dad's initials in the dirt."

"Why?"

"Because, I'd like to think he's in heaven watching me."

Lydia looked up at the sky, a clear blue with just a couple of feathery clouds. "Is Grandad in heaven watching us right now?"

"I think so."

Lydia mulled this, then nodded. "I wanna do it."

"OK. Just draw in the dirt." Luke took Lydia's index finger, and together they drew a _W_ , then a _D_ on the mound.

Lydia lingered after Luke removed his hand. "Can I tell Grandad something else?"

"Of course."

Painstakingly, Lydia drew a heart next to the initials. "I said I loved him. Would he have loved me, Daddy?"

Luke pressed a kiss to the side of her head, trying his very best not to cry. Oh, what the hell, this was a crying moment. "Yeah," he said, his voice thick with tears as he absently rocked her back and forth in his arms. "He would have loved you very much." He lingered on the mound with Lydia, silently echoing her words of love, and knowing that his father would have cherished them all.

* * *

 _Author's note: It is finished! I hope you have enjoyed this story! There is no planned sequel. Instead, I am turning my attention to a the sequel to "A Special Kind of Crazy" and finishing "How to Train Your Dragonfly."_

 _There are a lot of thanks to give. First and foremost is junienmomo for the original inspiration, and Meags09 for hosting the ficathon that led to junienmomo's story. Many thanks to all of those I have hashed out plot points with over the past 17 months, including JumpingCattleHockey, nojamhands, Meags09, Previously Anonymous, and Anglophile79. And, especially, thanks to all of you for reading and your words of encouragement._


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